:Title: Simplifying MIcrofinance :Author: chris macrae :Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:28:27 PDT :Modified: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:30:55 PDT :URL: http://www.ned.com/group/microfinance/news/7/ .. raw:: html When I want to simplify something I go back to how to "teach" it to my 9 year old daughter. I dont necessarily mean teach , "experience" would be a more apt word if the english language permitted "experience" it. So that even the most attention distracting heckler can have no substance for worries, I went and bought a book "One Hen" http://onehen.org/ from someone I have never met sponsored by an organsiation I dont particularly like : Opportunity International Here seems to be a good enough start for 9 year olds to grab hold of MF. Kojo and his mother live in a village in the Ashanti region of Ghana. None of the 20 families in the village have very much money, but they do have a good idea. Each family promises to save a bit of money so that one family can borrow all the savings to buy smething important === OK so that's 3rd grade microfinance ; a community invests in the most sustainable-productive working idea that's put in front of it. Every one is co-responsible for this- there are no lawyers, no henchmen if the investment goes wrong. But if it goes right the community gets its money back to invest over and over in communally productive stuff, and all the while more and more jobs and prosperity is flowing round the community. This is empowering. Nothing is being extracted by outsiders. Let me leave it there for 48 hours or so - please do add your own 3rd grade notes (stuff it would ne informative for my or any 9 year old to read) before we go up 2 grades (Next we will see some good news when a 9 year old asked a question 1000 adult new yorkers dared not ask. Its worth the wait)