Here is an interesting video by Professor Bhagwan Chowdhry from UCLA, in which he discusses some new potential in microfinance lending

Attention Puget Sound area readers of myKRO.org:

Please join us this Tuesday for a great event featuring the Financial Services for the Poor office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are the details.

SeaMo (www.seattlemicrofinance.org) will be hosting its third “Microfinance and Microbrews” at the Pyramid Ale House in Seattle. Please come and join us to meet others interested in microfinance and to hear from Cheryl Sesnon, the Executive Director of the local microfinance pioneer, Washington CASH, this Wednesday at 5:30pm.

More details: http://www.seattlemicrofinance.org/2008/09/24/microfinance-and-microbrews-october-22nd-featuring-washington-cash/

Facebook event page:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/event.php?eid=44050814736&ref=mf

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.

A couple of days ago I posted about Muhammad Yunus’ optimistic assertions about how well microfinance is weathering the financial crisis. The post prompted a comment from a reader who expressed some concerns about the claim. So, with the Dow touching 7800 today, I wanted to put the question out there for consideration and, hopefully, discussion. Will the global financial crisis hurt microfinance? If you have an opinion, post a comment. If you have data that support one view or another, link to them here. If you have questions of your own, throw them out there.

Finally, here are a couple of articles that contribute to the discussion:

“MFIs Fear Cash Drought”

“The Global Financial Crisis and Microfinance“

Progress is very hard to measure. It is even harder to quantify. Too often sufficient data is lacking and therefore relevant variables are omitted. Being able to accurately measure progress however, is extremely useful. Analyzing how far we have come in a certain number of years will gives us a better benchmark as to realistic future goals. With that said, I have been trying to figure out which indicators/statistics are most relevant in measuring the progress of Microcredit.

I (and I don’t think I am alone here) like numbers. I like to see statistical evidence that progress is happening - in addition to reading inspiring articles and stories. So for everybody out there who is like me and wants to see the evidence in graph form that Microcredit works and is progressing…..here you go.

I will start today by posting two graphs which I created using data from the Microcredit Summit Campain 07′ Report - I would recommending reading this report in full as well, as it is very insightful.

I hope these graphs are as inspiring to you as they are to me. In 2006, 69.8% of the total clients reached were considered ‘poorest clients’ - that is a significant increase from the 56.3% reached in 1997.

I realize that many more programs are reporting in 2006 than in the 1990’s, and that clearly the number of ‘poorest clients’ reached will be higher - but the bottom line is… Microfinance is growing and reaching more of the ‘poorest of poor’ than ever! And if you look closely at the percent increases you will see that while the number of programs reporting increased on average by 21.7% over the span of those nine years, the number of ‘poorest clients’ reached increased on average by 33%! Now that is exciting.

I will try to keep the graphs and statistical analysis coming! Until then…

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]

YouTube announced their “In My Name” campaign today. Anyone can upload a video between now and November 1st, and then YouTube will make a mashup of the best videos to be played at the UN General Assembly. It’s fantastic to see how new media is changing media by giving anyone and everyone a voice that can be heard by world leaders. You can check out the In My Name YouTube channel here.

[via TechCrunch via Dave Schappell]

9/25/08 — World Millennieum Development Goals Blogging Day

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation are asking you to join with bloggers around the world to post about making poverty history on September 25th 2008, the World Millennium Development Goals blogging day. More than 300 bloggers are raising their voices to let people know about the 1.2 billion people who live on less than $1 a day. Whether you want to write about the MDGs, a field story from an MFI, a poem, a podcast, a video clip, a jpg of a piece of art, a prayer, an open letter to your leaders, everybody is encouraged to blog about helping end poverty in our world.

For those of you who don’t know what the Millennium Development Goals are, here is a quick summary — at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.

1. Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
4. Reduce Child Mortality
5. Improve Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development

In the US right now we are having a heated debate over who bears the burden of responsibility for the reckless loans that are now crippling our credit system. Is it the borrowers who should not have taken out loans larger than they could afford to repay? Or, is it the lenders who failed to properly vet borrowers?

Concern about overlending and other borrowing pitfalls is obviously on the mind of those attending the Clinton Global Initiative. In response a broad consortium of microfinance organizations have signed onto the Campaign for Client Protection in Microfinance. Accion, one of the signatories, describes the campaign:

Designed to maintain and extend the microfinance industry’s dedication to the welfare of its clients in a period of rapid growth, the campaign will promote a Microbanker’s Oath, akin to the Hippocratic Oath, articulating six core principles:

• Avoidance of reckless lending that creates over-indebtedness
• Transparent and fair pricing
• Collections practices that are not abusive or coercive
• Ethical standards for staff
• Recourse mechanisms for client problems
• Privacy of client data

For more information, check out: www.centerforfinancialinclusion.org