Global Poverty & Microfinance
Last week, one of my good friends and fellow social entrepreneur Carolyn Chen from NYU Stern invited me to their annual global business conference (2/23/07). Although the day featured extraordinary leaders from every facet of life, I was mostly interested in the "Profits and the Poor" panel.
This panel included senior level officers from ACCION International, Kiva.org, Aspen's Institute's Business and Society Program, and Pro Mujer. The Grameen Foundation backed out last minute. For my day-job at the NYC Council, I've been researching the various types of microfinancing, the structures of microfinance institutions (for both domestic & international), and the ways local and global government bodies can help leverage more resources for MFIs.
I walked away from this event with two very interesting facts: 1) Even within the "poor" demographics, only a handful MFIs target the lower segment (such as Pro Mujer www.pro-mujer.org); and 2) It seems like structurally, different MFI models are not serving the unserved, or trying to meet the unmet demand, but rather they are overlapping each other's targeted clients.