This blog post was written by Carine Roenen of Fonkoze and Sabina Rogers and Bridget Dougherty of the Microcredit Summit Campaign who attended the recent Microlinks After Hours Seminar, “Lessons Learned From Sequenced, Integrated Strategies of Economic Strengthening of the Poorest.“ The post originally appeared here on the Microlinks blog.
“Economic strengthening” is all about breaking with the “microenterprise myth” that everyone, … Read More >
The inclusion of the poorest people in the world – the bottom billion – in formal and informal financial systems remains an elusive goal for governments and institutions around the world. While the “tools” of the economic development sector (microfinance, value chain development, market facilitation, enterprise development, savings groups, etc.) are successfully reaching poor households and are believed … Read More >
(This is the third part of a three-part blog on the Vulnerable Populations track. Read about the Bermuda Triangle of economic empowerment in the first part here and more about the workshops in the second part here.)
The presentations in the workshop entitled “Integrating Microfinance and Livelihoods: Plus Models that Make Business Sense” and the questions they raised … Read More >
(This is the second part of a three-part blog on the Vulnerable Populations track. Read the first part here. The presentations referenced below are available in PDF form here under Track 4.)
Reaching Vulnerable Households through Value Chain Development
In this workshop we heard from three programs that work from two ends. On one end, these programs push vulnerable people up a pathway out … Read More >
“If our work is not reaching the extreme poor, we’re not working hard enough.” Lauren Hendricks, Executive Director at CARE USA, threw that one out at us at “Strengthening the Economic Potential of the Bottom Billion,” a plenary session at the 2011 SEEP Annual Conference. The discussion tied in with the Vulnerable Populations workshop track, … Read More >
Image by UK Department for International Development
A new study from The MasterCard Foundation, Microfinance Opportunities, and Genesis Analytics provides an answer to the question: what does the current state of practice in financial education look like?
The report, Taking Stock: Financial Education Initiatives for the Poor, approaches issues of scale, sustainability, and impact—all with caution. The programs … Read More >
