Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Microfinance - its not all good

The most recent episode of the PBS Series NOW, Enterprising Ideas
took a look at some of the controversy in the microfinance world.

The episode looks specifically at the controversy surrounding a successful social entrepreneur in Mexico. Compartamos is a microfinance
company that once lent small sums of money to poor, indigenous Mexican
women to start businesses and is now a for-profit bank with more than
600,000 clients. Critics of Compartamos include Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered the microfinance approach to helping people out of poverty.

Harvard Business Review
also features a look at Microfinance this month - and that look also offers a warning to "Beware of Bad Microcredit."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Note that the NOW show on Compartamos and microcredit airs this Friday, September 21, at 8:30 pm on PBS, but your local times may vary. You can check the schedule here:

http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html