Published by Drew Meyers on 30 May 2008
Public Forum on Microfinance at the University of Washington — How Small Loans Support Sustainable Development
First of all, let me be the 2nd person to welcome you to myKRO.org! I’ve written about microfinance numerous times on my personal blog over the past year, but I fully anticipate the majority of my microfinance-related content will be written here at myKRO.org from now on. With that said, for those of you that read my blog, you’ll know there was a panel discussion at the University of Washington relating to microfinance tonight. The panelists all had a tremendous amount of experience with microfinance:
- Rick Beckett, CEO of Global Partnerships
- Peter Bladin, VP of Grameen Foundation and Director of Grameen Technology Center
- Terry Provance, Executive Director of Oikocredit USA
- Sangita Sigdyal, Deputy Director of the Microcredit Summit Campaign
- Carol Welch, former U.S. Coordinator of the U.N. Millennium Campaign
The panel discussion was moderated by Penny LeGate from KiroTV and sponsored by the Puget Sound Millennium Goals Project and the Center for Global Studies of the Jackson School at the University of Washington.
The discussion touched on a number of topics that we intend to explore in more depth here at myKRO in the coming months — including the different tiers of microloans (1, 2, and 3), the different types of social enterprises (financial services provider, integrated services provider, community wealth creator, and next social enterprise), the fact that Latin America has roughly 60 million potential borrowers, yet is only serving 9 million borrowers now, and Mifos.
However, in the meantime, I wanted to share several photos from the event:
