The Microfinance Schism
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Financial Promise for the Poor
| Author | : Kim Wilson |
| Publisher | : Kumarian Press |
| Total Pages | : 257 |
| Release | : 2010 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 1565493397 |
* Balanced assessment of recent savings-led programs in microfinance * Contributors include wide range of scholars and practitioners The entry of the private sector into financial services for the poor is a relatively new development, but already the glossy promises of credit-led microfinance are facing scrutiny from the development community. Policymakers and economists have begun picking through the hype of microfinance to identify where and how top-down loans might fit into broader human development efforts. To many, the answer involves shifting focus to another financial service: savings. Serving as a strong and perhaps more effective tool than microcredit, microsavings is quickly becoming a lauded poverty-alleviation tool. Contributors to Financial Promise for the Poor cover current innovations in microsavings happening around the world. They describe how savings group members in the developing world are avoiding many of the financial liabilities and debt of other microfinance programs while gaining skills and finding opportunities in collective enterprise. The turn from credit to savings speaks to the growing empowerment of individuals and communities as they break the bonds of indebtedness and find their own paths to financial security.
We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky
| Author | : Mara Kardas-Nelson |
| Publisher | : Metropolitan Books |
| Total Pages | : 351 |
| Release | : 2024-06-11 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1250817250 |
A deeply reported work of journalism that explores the promises and perils of microfinance, told through the eyes of international lenders and women borrowers in West Africa In the mid-1970s, Muhammad Yunus, an American trained Bangladeshi economist, met a poor female stool maker who needed money to expand her business. In an act widely known as the beginning of microfinance, Yunus lent $27 to forty-two women, hoping small credit would help the women pull themselves out of poverty. Soon, Yunus’s Grameen Bank was born, and the idea of giving very small, high-interest loans to poor people took off. In 2006, Yunus and the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for “efforts to create economic and social development from below.” But there’s a problem with this story. There are mounting concerns that these small loans are as likely to bury poor people in debt as they are to pull them from poverty, with borrowers from India to Kenya facing consequences such as jail time and forced land sales. Reportedly hundreds have even committed suicide. What happened? Did microfinance take a wrong turn, or was it flawed from the beginning? Mara Kardas-Nelson’s We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky is about unintended consequences, blind optimism, and the decades-long ramifications of seemingly small policy choices. The book is rooted in the stories of women borrowers in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Their narratives, woven through a deep history of modern international development, are set against the rise of Yunus’s vision that tiny loans would “put poverty in museums.” Kardas-Nelson asks: What is missed with a single, financially focused solution to global inequity that ignores the real drivers of poverty? Who stands to benefit and, more important, who gets left behind?
The Economics of Microfinance, second edition
| Author | : Beatriz Armendariz |
| Publisher | : MIT Press |
| Total Pages | : 361 |
| Release | : 2010-04-23 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 0262265516 |
An accessible analysis of the global expansion of financial markets in poor communities, incorporating the latest thinking and evidence. The microfinance revolution has allowed more than 150 million poor people around the world to receive small loans without collateral, build up assets, and buy insurance. The idea that providing access to reliable and affordable financial services can have powerful economic and social effects has captured the imagination of policymakers, activists, bankers, and researchers around the world; the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went to microfinance pioneer Muhammed Yunis and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. This book offers an accessible and engaging analysis of the global expansion of financial markets in poor communities. It introduces readers to the key ideas driving microfinance, integrating theory with empirical data and addressing a range of issues, including savings and insurance, the role of women, impact measurement, and management incentives. This second edition has been updated throughout to reflect the latest data. A new chapter on commercialization describes the rapid growth in investment in microfinance institutions and the tensions inherent in the efforts to meet both social and financial objectives. The chapters on credit contracts, savings and insurance, and gender have been expanded substantially; a new section in the chapter on impact measurement describes the growing importance of randomized controlled trials; and the chapter on managing microfinance offers a new perspective on governance issues in transforming institutions. Appendixes and problem sets cover technical material.
The Lebanese Schism?
| Author | : Naveen Qamar Jawaid |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 115 |
| Release | : 2010 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : |
The widespread popularity of microfinance as a "win-win" solution to global poverty alleviation has significantly limited debate and dialogue around contesting viewpoints, program structures, and implementation norms. The present microcredit industry in Lebanon offers an authoritative space for practitioners to explore a differing microcredit model as implemented by a Hezbollah affiliated NGO, Al Qard Al Hassan Association. As one of the oldest and largest microcredit institutions in the Middle East, I argue that the perceived Lebanese schism allows us to explore the role in which organizational diversity has enabled a reinterpretation and an opportunity to revisit microcredit as a poverty alleviation tool in the context of the Southern Suburbs of Beirut. The country of Lebanon also offers a new locality in which development planners can explore how an NGO grassroots program, Al Majmoua, and how an institution, Hezbollah, that began as a grassroots political movement for the community and is now in many ways of the state, implement successful microcredit programs. Through the lens of Lebanese microcredit professionals and borrowers of the programs, this study explores how a hybrid narrative of microcredit has escaped industry isomorphism in Lebanon and how social capital has been created, managed, and reproduced.
The Microfinance Impact
| Author | : Ranjula Bali Swain |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 161 |
| Release | : 2013-08-15 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 1136308105 |
Financial inclusion through microfinance has become a powerful force in improving the living conditions of poor farmers, rural non-farm enterprises and other vulnerable groups. In its unique ability to link the existing extensive network of India’s rural bank branches with the Self Help Groups (SHG), the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has covered up to 97 million poor households by March 2010 under its Self Help Group Bank Linkage Programme. Policy-makers have proclaimed SHGs as ‘‘the most potent initiative ... for delivering financial services to the poor in a sustainable manner." This book presents a comprehensive scientific assessment of the impact of the Self Help Group Bank Linkage Programme (SBLP) on the member households. The book discusses wide-ranging topics, including the rural financial sector in India, the history and structure of the SBLP, the impact methodologies, the economic and social impact of microfinance, its role in building assets while reducing poverty and vulnerability, the role of women and their empowerment, training and accumulation of human capital and policy implications of lessons learned. The empirical results show that vulnerability of the more mature SHG members declines significantly. Vulnerability also falls for villages with better infrastructure and for SHGs that are formed by NGOs and linked by banks. The results strongly demonstrate that on average, there is a significant increase in the empowerment of the female participants. The economic impact of SBLP is found to be the most empowering. Greater autonomy and changes in social attitudes also lead to female empowerment. The investigation further reveals that training (especially business training) has a definite positive impact on assets but not on income. The impact of training can be improved through better infrastructure (as in paved roads), linkage model type, and the training organiser. Bridging the gap in the existing literature and between academics and practitioners, this book moves beyond the usual theoretical issues in the impact assessment literature and draws on new developments in methodology. It will be of interest to academics, development practitioners and students of economics, political science, sociology, public policy and development studies.
Why Doesn't Microfinance Work?
| Author | : Milford Bateman |
| Publisher | : Zed Books Ltd. |
| Total Pages | : 384 |
| Release | : 2010-06-10 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 1848138954 |
Since its emergence in the 1970s, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to address poverty in developing and transition countries. It is beloved of rock stars, movie stars, royalty, high-profile politicians and ‘troubleshooting’ economists. In this provocative and controversial analysis, Milford Bateman reveals that microfinance doesn’t actually work. In fact, the case for it has been largely built on hype, on egregious half-truths and – latterly – on the Wall Street-style greed of those promoting and working in microfinance. Using a multitude of case studies, from India to Cambodia, Bolivia to Uganda, Serbia to Mexico, Bateman demonstrates that microfi nance actually constitutes a major barrier to sustainable economic and social development, and thus also to sustainable poverty reduction. As developing and transition countries attempt to repair the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis, Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? argues forcefully that the role of microfinance in development policy urgently needs to be reconsidered.
