• The latest great Idea in microcredit
• ACCION Invests $4.2m in New Microinsurance Initiatives to
  Help Move Microfinance Beyond Credit
• Microfinance, Cooperatives and Microinsurance as Sustainable Solutions
• Beyond Microfinance: Microfranchising, with Grant Hunter

Zach Turner of Kiva found out during a trip to Kenya prior to the election.

[via Kiva Chronicles]

• The Stock Market Goes Social
• I Heart You Pucallpa, Peru
• Microfinance Still Hums, Despite Global Financial Crisis

Here’s a presentation from Alex Counts, the President of the Grameen Foundation, that I found on MTEF.

• Muhammad Yunus cuts our birthday cake — Happy birthday MicroPlace!!
• John Deere Foundation and Opportunity International Join to Fight Hunger
• Rural democracy and women empowerment
• MICROCAPITAL STORY: SKS Microfinance Raises $75.4m in Equity Capital in Transaction Led by Sandstone Capital
• Navigating Monsoon Season by Moto

If you are a MicroPlace investor and live in the San Francisco Bay area, you will have the chance to meet Muhammad Yunus at the party MicroPlace is throwing in honor of their 1 year anniversary. The event is on Thursday, November 13th in San Jose, California from 12:30-1:30pm. More details over at the MicroPlace blog.

• My First Foray into Microfinance
• One Rung Up and Flat
• Does the Gates Foundation funding of microcredit have impact? Who knows? [via SeaMO]
• KIVA FELLOWS: Microfinance experience can lead to encore career
• Beyond Microfinance: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Poverty Alleviation

If you read many blogs, you likely already know that today is Blog Action Day — the goal being to help expand the conversation around alleviating poverty. From climate control to microfinance to saving children to inequality, Blog Action Day resulted in a lot of great thought about a variety of important topics. We need to start thinking more about how we can help rid this world of poverty. Putting our heads in the sand and ignoring today’s challenges is not acceptable. Instead, we need to tackle today’s critical issues with the energy of those passionate about the issues at hand. In order to reach the goal of halving the proportion of those living on less than a $1 a day by 2015, we’re all going to have to work together to make it happen and I believe microfinance is a huge piece of the overall puzzle.

I sincerely thank everyone who devotes their time, energy, and passion toward helping to alleviate poverty worldwide. The world is a better place because of you.

Though the Millennium Development Goals are fairly broad in scope, I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that microfinance will continue to be a vital tool to eradicating poverty worldwide. There’s a great video put together by ONE.org that I wanted to share that shows some of the progress made toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

[via ONE]

• Distributing wealth created by social businesses
• Kiva should co-brand with microfranchises
• Blue Financial Services, International Bank Plc, and AIG Investments Found Nigerian Blue Intercontinental Micro Finance Bank
• For-Profit Microfinance Efforts Under Scrutiny
• Profit: for and against
• Your interest rate is what?!?