March 24, 2020

Financial First Responders: VisionFund Mexico

I interviewed Nino Gonjilashvili, CEO of VisionFund Mexico, about what they are doing to serve their clients and protect their staff during the coronavirus crisis. Some […]
March 24, 2020

Financial First Responders

To stay safe, people need to stay home. But when people stay home, they earn no money. That leaves Bashyal and his team trying to figure out how to bridge the gap, how to help their clients manage scarce resources long enough to survive this crisis.
March 18, 2020

Group-Based Financial Services and the Coronavirus

Every month hundreds of millions of people around the world meet in groups to receive financial services. Will these groups turn into vectors for #COVID-19 or will they help flatten the curve?
March 5, 2020

Some Climb Slowly – Aleya

90% of BRAC’s clients succeed. What happens to those who don’t?
February 25, 2020
Getting water from the pipe

Learning from the Gift of Pain

Pain shows us where things are going wrong so that we will pay attention and fix them. When we don’t feel pain, we end up ignoring the signals that tell us we are in danger.
February 20, 2020

Promises Kept

Appolinarie had been left alone so many times, she did not trust the new opportunity. But then they asked her to sign a performance agreement ....
February 11, 2020

Program Lifts Inmates, Offers Second Chances

An article in the Kewanee Star Courier on the PERC program started by the Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives Microfinance Group
February 11, 2020

From Inhabitants to Citizens

Last week I posted a review of Martín Burt’s book Who Owns Poverty.  I included some clips from an interview I conducted with Martin last year […]
February 6, 2020

Can a Stoplight Guide the World Out of Poverty?

“Just Tell Me What Poverty Means” Like Shaq and Kobe, Martín Burt and Luis Fernando Sanabria form a team for the ages. Martin, Executive Director of […]
January 20, 2020

The World House

In the year before his death Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. published the book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?  In one of […]
December 23, 2019

Thank You, Abed

The world lost one of its greatest fighters against poverty last week.  Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of BRAC, died at the age of 84.   […]
December 18, 2019

Can the Holy Grail Be Found in a Hindu Temple?

Getting Paid to Do Good How do you generate income from delivering a service to people living in poverty? It’s a challenge faced by do-gooders the […]
December 3, 2019

Updated Recommendations for Giving

Last year I posted my recommendations for giving on Giving Tuesday (for those not living in the US, this is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving).  This year […]