Quotes About Microfinance

She may hide it, but Clinton is a policy nerd. Ask about microfinance, and she'll talk your ear off. Mention early childhood interventions, and she will gush about obscure details of a home visitation experiment in Elmira, N.Y., that dramatically improved child outcomes.

I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people, given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh.

They explained to me that the bank cannot lend money to poor people because these people are not creditworthy.

What attracted me towards microfinance is it's a very sustainable business, which has an impact on people's lives yet it can be very profitable.

Microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge

I wanted to give money to people like this woman so that they would be free from the moneylenders to sell their product at the price which the markets gave them - which was much higher than what the trader was giving them.

We developed microfinance to fight loan sharks - I was telling people don't go to loan sharks - not trying to take advantage and make money for myself. I would be a junior loan shark if I did... It is not a panacea.

A well-functioning microfinance bank can actually be a profitable business as well. So it became a perfect proof point that, through business, you can provide an experience that leads to individual self-empowerment.

I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.

I began my career as an economics professor but became frustrated because the economic theories I taught in the classroom didn't have any meaning in the lives of poor people I saw all around me. I decided to turn away from the textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence.

The Microfinance segment is a challenging client servicing space and thus requires a great amount of dedication, integrity and teamwork.

I founded Grameen Bank to provide loans to those considered traditionally unbankable. Grameen Bank works with the poorest and often illiterate, providing uncollateralized micro-loans for tiny business enterprises by which they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

The most powerful tool to lift families out of extreme poverty is to grant micro-loans to women.

I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked.

If you can't travel to the developing world, look at helping to fund a woman with a small loan and follow her. Learn her story. Learn about the difference that you're making.

Microfinance does not require previous experience or loans to the same extent as a small-business loan, so it's easier for women to enter the micro sector.

In 1989, I started the National Association of Business Women. We incorporated microfinance and different job training for women. We did a survey, with USAID, that found women lacked training, credit and information.

Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty.

Addressing governance issues are important because whichever silo you work in, be it education, microfinance, sanitation, food or health, you would eventually hit governance deficit.

There are ways to abuse the microfinance system, just like there are ways to abuse the mortgage system. The solution is not to ban mortgages.

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation - microfinance - involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

Grameen Bank was formed as an institution owned by its borrower members, who are poor women. Through its unique decision-making process, Grameen Bank has given millions of women the means to emerge from the shadows in a male-dominated society and to make something of themselves.

Long live Grameen Bank. Let the power of poor women prevail.

Where micro-finance focuses on small loans to individual, low-income women, think of Acumen Fund more like a venture capital fund.