Creating a World Without Poverty
Nobel Peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus talks about how he founded Grameen Bank to offer economic building tools for some of the poorest people in Bangladesh.
Podcast
Poverty
Latest
Concrete Ways for the US to Move “Beyond the Line” When It Measures Poverty
What would it take to implement “next-generation” poverty measures in the United States?
Digging for Ponies
Two years after the spectacular failure in the financial markets, it’s getting even more difficult to look on the bright side.
Questions to Address Youth Unemployment
We need to spur fresh thinking in this field even as we test and evaluate diverse approaches that promote youth economic empowerment in developing countries.
Unitus, We Stand; Divide Us, We Fall
An external agency should review the circumstances surrounding the Unitus decision to terminate its 10-year commitment to microfinance.
Most Popular
Design Thinking for Social Innovation
By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top.
The Problem With Fair Trade Coffee
Fair Trade-certified coffee is growing in sales, but strict certification requirements are resulting in uneven economic advantages for coffee growers and lower quality coffee for consumers.
Microfinance Misses Its Mark
Despite the hoopla over microfinance, it doesn't cure poverty. But stable jobs do. If societies are serious about helping the poorest of the poor, they should stop investing in microfinance and start supporting large, labor-intensive industries.
In Microfinance, Clients Must Come First
Few microfinance institutions articulate what, exactly, their ultimate goals are and how to achieve them. If the goal of microfinance is to alleviate poverty, the authors say, then MFIs should focus on helping their clients build successful enterprises, rather than on making more and bigger loans.
Romanticizing the Poor
Market solutions to poverty, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful.