From time to time along comes a book like Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers
All in Literature
A Really Neat Idea!
My grandmother too would be smiling happily, wherever she now is, to see the fundamental principle of her system being applied to the most recently pervasive technology
The Unfun
Kim takes down Dean Karlan, who for no good reason seems to be taking down informal mechanisms.
Great Review, Great Book
Here’s a link to an excellent review of In Their Own Hands: How Savings Groups are Revolutionizing Development
Financial Promise for the Poor: How Groups Build Microsavings is about, drum roll, savings groups. Its chapters range from ...
Poor Fiction
Don't read this book, says Kim.
Two cows... or three?
One of the good things about provocative writers like Milford Bateman is that... they provoke. Here's a cool head (Greg Pirie) writing about a hot head - a good short read.
Buddhist Financial Services »
Finally, Buddhist financial services would be inextricably linked to and supportive of all parts of a good life, including protection of the physical environment...
The Judo of Change
...the multiplication of so many little neighborhood clubs, whether or not their groupiness holds over time, does bring about the transformational change originally sought by the community. People are less isolated, happier, whole...
The savings group sector has the opportunity to avoid the growing pains of microcredit - the hype, the promulgation of unrepresentative and unattributable results, the focus on financial performance to the detriment of social performance, the upmarket drift. Will we seize that opportunity?
We are so certain that interest must be either related to investment or time, that we neglect to see local interpretations of interest as more relevant to local people.
“Linking Poor Rural Households to Microfinance and Markets in Ethiopia,” (John Burns and Soloman Bogale). There may be some golden nuggets for those interested in livestock, savings groups, and crop value chains.