As a traveling American, I face the insane roaming costs of the US telephone companies, and so I use the work-around of having a local phone and swapping SIM cards in each country
For today’s class (I teach at a university) students were to view this very nice video produced by CGAP.
Buzzwords Then and Now
Just when we thought we had cycled through all possible catchphrases, 2013 ushered in some new ones.
Five Worst Savings Group Ideas of 2013
At the end of the year, it is traditional to make Best and Worst lists. Here’s my take on the five worst ideas I’ve seen this year.
Five Best Savings Group Ideas of 2013
Unlike the bad ideas that have been recycled year after year, the good ideas of 2013 are all new this year, which is quite exciting!
Report from Bogota Forum on Savings Groups
Participants brought great enthusiasm for a methodology that is starting to gain momentum in the region
Afrigadget
Local innovation is inspiring.
Honey Bee
Here is the most delightful magazine on local innovations I know of
Alex Counts at the FI2020 Global Forum
WE thought his remarks about how to do technology right were so pertinent that we copy them here.
Collective Intelligence, Going Viral and Savings Groups
I proposed that there were three things that were keeping the Savings Group idea from spreading faster:
ACAF on the March!
Read the whole thing, but here are some key statistics:
Categories?
The hue of each panel represents the skin color of twenty people that Kim randomly encountered on The University of Texas at Austin campus.
Beware Financial Inclusion
Oh, I know, it would be great to reform the big banks. But, uh - CFI, with all respect, it’s not going to happen.
Okay, you’ve seen savings groups in five minutes, savings groups in three minutes - now, here’s savings groups in TWO minutes.
Saving Money and Culture in Mapuche Lands
Indigenous Peoples as being “pre-modern groups” has been an engrained idea through which the industrial West has seen itself reflected as advanced.
Epargner, ça s'apprend !
Séverine writes about her encounters with savings groups in Colombia.
No More Tears
The savings group sector spends a remarkable, and depressing, amount of time recording, collecting, verifying, consolidating, reporting, and analysing data.
Financing solar lamps in Haiti
I was recently reading “The Poor and Their Money” by Stuart Rutherford and Sukhwinder Arora and came across a useful alternative to credit that I think is worth sharing.
The Iddir: A burial savings group for Ethiopian Taxi Drivers
In essence, the iddir is a type of insurance program run by a community or group to meet emergency situations, primarily funerals.
Trust Made Easy
This reminded me that Ernest Heminway reportedly once said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”