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A Nobel loan shark?

This article argues that the founder of the Grameen bank is a dogmatic free-market ideologue which uses use poor people's (often socially-constructed) desire for credit to justify shrinking the already beleaguered welfare policies of wretched Third World states. (Patrick Bond, Zmag, 19 October 2006)

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-10/19bond.cfm

(Added: Tue Oct 24 2006   Hits: 96)

Micro-Finance, Macro Interest Rates

Traditional banking institutions have typically failed to cater for those who try to make ends meet on less than a dollar a day. In Guinea,where poverty is widespread, thousands have turned to microcredit organisations for help, as this article explains. (Saliou Samb, IPS News, 18 May 2006)

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=33294

(Added: Tue May 23 2006   Hits: 91)

Microcredit Schemes Run by Indigenous Women Reactivate Economy

The Puna plateau region in northeastern Argentina has become a showcase for community financial administration, run by women. They have small banks, manage investment and health loans, and are reactivating the economy, for the good of the entire community. (Marcela Valente,IPS News, 14 June 2006)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33624

(Added: Tue Jun 20 2006   Modified: Wed Jun 21 2006   Hits: 239)

Banking on Development : private banks and aid donors in developing countries

Over the past decade aid donors have developed a growing interest in the private sector while private banks have set about creating corporate social responsibility programs, sustainable lending and microfinance programmes. The aim of this paper is to map the potential synergies between private banks and aid donors. (OECD working paper, November 2007)

http://oberon.sourceoecd.org/vl=3694525/cl=13/nw=1/rpsv/cgi-bin/wppdf?file=5l4bhbfrf037.pdf

(Added: Wed Jan 23 2008   Hits: 35)

Banking With The Poor

The Banking With The Poor Network is a network of some 35 national policy institutions, commercial banks and NGOs from nine countries in Asia - namely Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Its objective is to link microfinance with the financial system.

http://www.bwtp.org/

(Added: Wed Mar 20 2002   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 332)

Big banks find little loans a Nobel winner, too

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank have been jointly awarded the Nobel peace Prize 2006 "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below". As the world recognizes Yunus for his contribution to global peace, the world of finance is increasingly realizing his idea is more than mere charity - it is good business. Additionally, this article goes into how Yunus has expanded beyond his original notion of microfinance into founding food, phone and solar power companies. (Mark Sappenfield and Mark Trumbull, Christian Science Monitor, 16 October 2006)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1016/p01s03-wogi.html

(Added: Tue Oct 24 2006   Hits: 81)

Bringing development back into Microfinance (PDF 34 KB)

by Maria Otero, Journal of Microfinance, Fall 1999. Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income, poor, and very poor self-employed people. As microfinance continues to evolve as a development strategy, it will be successful only if it is able to strike the right balance between the two frameworks--development and finance--that underlie its practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore three points at which microfinance intersects with development, to argue why these three intersections make microfinance compelling from the perspective of development, and to explain why practitioners, donors and others involved in the microfinance field tend to forget the connection between the two.

http://marriottschool.byu.edu/microfinance/articles/article23.pdf

(Added: Mon Feb 14 2005   Modified: Fri Jul 08 2005   Hits: 146)

Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP)

CGAP serves MFIs, donors, and the microfinance industry by providing technical assistance and strategic advice, by developing and disseminating technical guides and services, by delivering training, and by performing field research on innovations. CGAP also has a small grant facility that provides funding for these activities and for strategic investments in MFIs.

http://www.cgap.org/

(Added: Wed Jun 14 2000   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 285)

Declining benefits to membership in microfinance programmes -Theory and empirical evidence [PDF]

Prepared by Nidhiya Menon(2002), this paper studies the benefits of participation in micro finance programs, and shows that although membership in these programs is an effective instrument in combating inter-seasonal consumption differences, there is a threshold level of length of participation beyond which benefits begin to diminish.

http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpdc/0403006.html

(Added: Thu Jul 28 2005   Hits: 117)

Definitions adopted by the Virtual Library on Microcredit

Community-based finance institution Community Economic Development co-operative.

http://www.gdrc.org/icm/terms.html

(Added: Wed Jul 25 2001   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 232)

ENTERWEB

The Enterprise Development Website focuses on micro, small and medium enterprise development both in developed and developing countries. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

http://www.enterweb.org/

(Added: Tue Mar 30 1999   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 304)

Finance for the Poor: The Quarterly Newsletter of Microfinance Activities in Asia and the Pacific

Interest in Microfinance is burgeoning as a result of success stories, a better understanding of how the poor use money and how their diverse needs for financial services can be met more effectively. ADB publishes a quarterly newsletter Finance for the Poor aimed at improving access to information about Microfinance.

http://www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/Microfinance/

(Added: Mon Dec 04 2000   Modified: Thu Jun 29 2006   Hits: 307)

Gender and microfinance in Bougainville: A case study

This article describes the experiences of the authors in raising gender awareness among participants in the Bougainville Microfinance Scheme (BMFS) in its initial stages of development. (J Byford, G Guanara, Development Bulletin, 2002)

http://devnet.anu.edu.au/GenderPacific/pdfs/07_gen_status_byford.pdf

(Added: Thu Nov 02 2006   Hits: 289)

Gender and Microfinance: guidelines for good practice

Recognising gender issues in microfinance, as in any project intervention, means more than targeting a programme towards women. It means recognising the position of women in relation to men as actors in society: in the context of husbands and families; local community and authority and more broadly their position in society at the national level as governed by laws and custom.

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~hsssaj/gender.htm

(Added: Thu Nov 25 1999   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 349)

Giving Credit to the Microlenders: Formal Microlending, Credit Constraints and Adverse Selection - a Case Study of Shrimp Farmers in Bangladesh [pdf]

Formal microcredit schemes include small loans given to people unable to obtain credit from banks. These schemes are increasingly popular in Bangladesh as an alternative to bank loans, but do they reach the most suitable borrowers?(Camilla Andersson, Erik Holmgren, James MacGregor and Jesper Stage,IIED, 2008)

http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/15510IIED.pdf

(Added: Tue Apr 29 2008   Hits: 13)

Grameen Bank (Official Site)

Grameen Bank provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh without any collateral.

http://www.grameen-info.org/

(Added: Tue Mar 30 1999   Modified: Mon Oct 15 2007   Hits: 228)

Grameen Technology Center

The Grameen Technology Center is working to eliminate poverty by leveraging the power of microcredit coupled with information and communication technology. The Grameen Technology Center focuses on technology that: makes the delivery of microcredit even more efficient; enhances income generating opportunities for the rural poor; provides poor communities access to information for better health and education.

http://www.tech.gfusa.org/

(Added: Mon Mar 22 2004   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 212)

Imp-Act

Imp-Act is an action-research programme designed to improve the quality of microfinance services and their impact on poverty. Our work with 30 global partners demonstrates that microfinance can have significant social impacts if MFIs develop approaches that are designed around the needs of their clients and their social mission.

http://www.imp-act.org/

(Added: Mon Dec 20 2004   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 126)

IMPACT ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGIES FOR MICROFINANCE

This paper reviews the methodological options for the impact assessment (IA) of microfinance. Following a discussion of the varying objectives of IA it examines the choice of conceptual frameworks and presents three paradigms of impact assessment: the scientific method, the humanities tradition and participatory learning and action (PLA).

http://www.man.ac.uk/idpm/fdrp_wp1.htm

(Added: Thu Oct 14 1999   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 455)

Is Microfinance an Effective Strategy to Reach the Millennium Development Goals?

Elizabeth Littlefield, Johnathan Murduch, and Syed Hashemi; CGAP: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, 2003. The MDGs are framed as concrete outcomes in the areas of nutrition, education, health, gender equity, and environment. Thus work in these specific areas will be a large part of any development strategy driven by the MDGs. But decades of experience has shown that that progress in these areas is powerfully affected by other factors in the broader context, such as a functioning government, physical security, economic growth, security, and basic infrastructure (for example, transportation). This paper reviews the mounting body of evidence showing that the availability of financial services for poor households ("microfinance") is a critical contextual factor with strong impact on the achievement of the MDGs.

http://www.cgap.org/docs/FocusNote_24.html

(Added: Mon Feb 14 2005   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 130)

Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Stock of What We Know [PDF]

Grameen Foundation USA has published the first comprehensive literature review of existing research on the impact of microfinance around the globe. Written by Nathanael Goldberg, Measuring the Impact of Microfinance: Taking Stock of What We Know examines roughly 100 impact evaluations released since 1986, including Reaching the Poor with Effective Microcredit, Mahabub Hossain and Catalina P. Diaz's report on Grameen-style microfinance in the Philippines, and Microfinance and Poverty, a study written by Shahidur Khandker that was published in 2005.

http://www.gfusa.org/pubdownload/dl.php?pubID=29

(Added: Wed Jan 25 2006   Hits: 254)

Micro credit, Macro hype

by Laxmi Murthy, Oct 2002. Go to any village in India and what you will find, besides leaky hand pumps, parched fields and bony cattle, is the ubiquitous self-help group. Going by several names - from 'thrift' and 'credit' societies to microfinance, the self-help group (SHG) is now a fixture in the lives of rural women.

http://www.indiatogether.org/women/finance/macrohype.htm

(Added: Tue Oct 22 2002   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 231)

Micro-credit no panacea for poor women

by Nan Dawkins Scully. Microenterprise development has, in some circumstances, contributed positively to women's empowerment and helped extremely poor women survive economic crises in the short term. However ...

http://www.gdrc.org/icm/wind/micro.html

(Added: Wed Jul 25 2001   Modified: Wed Jan 31 2007   Hits: 232)

Microcredit under the Microscope (Reflections around a Conference)

by Alan Fricker, August 2001. Despite the seemingly obvious benefits, at least to Western thinking, microcredit, it seems, only alleviates rather than eliminates poverty, even the much praised Grameen Bank scheme. Furthermore, through an interesting conjunction of conference papers, impoverished peoples appear to have an intrinsic aversion to microcredit, articulated through their actions rather than their words. This aversion would seem to extend to development generally and to Western education.

http://www.dev-zone.org/kcdocs/1664FrickerMicrocredit.html

(Added: Wed Aug 29 2001   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 227)

Microcredit: A Weapon In Fighting Extremism

Microcredit was invented 20 years ago in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus. Today, Professor Yunus's Grameen Bank and copycat organizations have 3.5 million women borrowers; adding their dependents, that amounts to about 20 percent of Bangladesh's population.

http://www.grameen-info.org/mcredit/weapon.html

(Added: Wed Jul 25 2001   Modified: Wed Jun 15 2005   Hits: 224)

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