Word: microcredit
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With marketing savvy introduced into the equation, poverty-alleviation experts are concerned that people will be talked into loans they wouldn't otherwise want. "Most genuinely poor people are not happy with carrying debt," says international-development expert Thomas Dichter. "The danger of all this new money is that microcredit institutions will feel compelled to go out and generate more borrowers...
...into AIDS programming early this decade, very little cash got to the marginalized groups who really were high-risk. In Ghana, three-quarters of new HIV infections occur in the sex trade, according to the World Bank, but 99% of the HIV funding goes to general-population programs like microcredit schemes. The same pattern of ignoring high-risk, low-status people is found in countries like Nigeria, Cambodia and Thailand, says Pisani: "It's very strong to say it's deliberate neglect, but we are deliberately choosing not to do things that we know work well in reducing the spread...
...area in the Kokolopori forest to the west. Here too, locals drew the boundaries of the reserve, but this time there were more agreements covering the establishment of schools, roads and medical clinics, and investment in transportation, communications, power generation, microcredit and agriculture...
...about the lack of political opposition. But if you look at what happened in 1994, lack of opposition looks pretty small fare." Dabbs Cavin, 42, a lawyer and commercial banker, moved with his wife and family from Arkansas to Rwanda last year to set up an arm of the microcredit lender Opportunity International and merge it with a local bank. "Kagame has a vision, he's doing all the right things, and that's attractive," he says. "No country has ever risen as fast, and from as low a point. It's an exciting thing to be part...
Whatever its limitations, supporters of the microcredit sector say its power to help individuals is real. "Women who come out of poverty spend extra income on health care, housing or sending their children to school," says Gowher Rizvi, a former Ford Foundation exec who gave Grameen its first grant. "That's worthwhile if it's even one family." Back in Ecuador, Penafiel was able to pay back his Kiva.org loan five months later, and had a little left over to cover his six kids' school fees. It isn't quite the American Dream, but it's a start...