July 3, 2020

American Exceptionalism, American Hypocrisy

How do I explain the current state of the USA to my friends in other countries?
April 13, 2020

An Update from Equitas Bank

Last week I posted an articled based on interviews with John Alex of Equitas Holdings and HL Manjunath of SKDRDP. Alex followed up with some pictures […]
April 8, 2020

Who Gets Helped First?

On March 24th, Prime Minister Narendra Modi put 1.5 billion Indians on lockdown for at least 21 days. On April 3rd, eight days later, money from the government began flowing into the accounts of 20 million families hardest hit by that stay at home order.
April 1, 2020

Illiquid Contagion

Half of the financial service organizations responding to our survey in the past week have said that their operations have been suspended due to government lockdowns […]
March 28, 2020

When “Stay at Home” Means “Starve at Home”

Over the last few days, Marin Burt, President of Fundación Paraguaya has been on the phone with the President and leaders of Parliament, convincing them to […]
March 28, 2020

An Update from Aris Alip, CARD MRI, Philippines

With a part of the year designated as “typhoon season,” the Philppines gets regular practice in dealing with disasters. But nothing like COVID-19 has ever hit […]
March 26, 2020

A Trusted Source of Life-Saving Information: BRAC in Bangladesh

When a pandemic is spreading, how do you communicate with millions of people in living in poverty to help them know what they can do to […]
March 26, 2020

Financial First Responders: COVID-19 Resources for Financial Inclusion

Links to Resources for those Providing Financial Services Updated 26 April 2020 Covid-finclusion.org – A forum of SPTF, CFI and EMP, including an important 3-part series […]
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?
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 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