Studying the Past, Looking to the Future: USAID MPEP Office Blog Series

Warm greetings from USAID's Microfinance Consortium. I welcome you to our blog series, "Studying the Past, Looking to the Future: A Microfinance Retrospective." We want to reflect on USAID and our partners' work in microfinance over the past 20-plus years to share our successes and lessons learned. We see this as a chance to come together as a community of practice around a subject that is important to us all, how our broader efforts toward financial inclusion are building markets and improving lives. So sit back, enjoy the read, and get ready to engage with your comments and reflections on this great development story. I look forward to following the progress of this blog series and hope to see broad participation. Please share your thoughts on these posts, as well as your own experiences, anecdotes, lessons learned, best practices, and photos.

Sincere regards, 
Heath Cosgrove,
USAID's Microfinance Consortium

Latest Post

Building on the Past, Shaping the Future of Financial Inclusion for All

By Eric G. Postel

It has been a pleasure to read this blog series on microfinance. Thank you to everyone who shared their stories and experiences on the evolution of the microfinance field.  USAID is fortunate to have partnered with the best and brightest over the years, people who recognized the critical importance of financial services for the poor and committed their lives to making it happen. Today, microfinance is a household word and, thanks to the doors it opened, hundreds of millions of people now have access to formal financial services. This is a true testimony to the energy, enthusiasm, and dedication of people from the ground up who have worked together to create this ‘game changer’ in development. Continue reading

Past Posts

• June 12, 2014: Getting Private Capital into the Hands of Those Who Need it Most by Michael Metzler
• June 11, 2014: Finance for All: How Mobile Phone Networks Are Democratizing Access to Finance by Kay McGowan
• June 10, 2014: Interview with Jason Wolfe: Microfinance Lessons Become Foundational to PEPFAR Programs
• June 9, 2014: BancoSol: Moving Microfinance into the Mainline Financial System by Richard Rosenberg
• June 5, 2014: Microfinance’s Bridge to the Digital Future by Lawrence Yanovitch
• June 4, 2014: Transforming Microfinance in Uganda by Jacqueline Wakhweya
• June 3, 2014:Reflections on Experimentation and Learning by Jim Boomgard
• June 2, 2014: Focus on the Field: The Philippines Microfinance Efforts & Digital Financial Inclusion by John Owens
• May 30, 2014: Interview by Jennefer Sebstad: The Future of Microfinance in Africa
• May 27, 2014: USAID’s Microfinance Experiences over the Past 25 Years: An Impression from the Field by John Owens
• May 23, 2014: Interview by Jennefer Sebstad: K-REP: From a USAID-Funded Project to Africa’s First Microfinance Bank
• May 21, 2014: Still Searching for Benefits by Larry Reed
• May 16, 2014: Growing a Mighty Oak: The Origins of SEEP by Elaine Edgcomb
• May 15, 2014: The Road that Microfinance Built by Renée Chao-Béroff
• May 14, 2014: Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom: The Implementation Grant Program by Anicca Jansen
• May 8, 2014: AIMS Pushes Envelope on Client Insights by Monique Cohen
• May 7, 2014: Like Totally 80s: Supporting Missions and Partners in the Field by Anicca Jansen
• May 1, 2014: The PISCES Project - Helping Small Enterprises Swim Upstream by Elisabeth Rhyne
• April 30, 2014: Why Was It Called the Office of Microenterprise Development? by Anicca Jansen
• April 25, 2014: How the Game Has Changed by Jennefer Sebstad & Anicca Jansen