News and Commentary

Lumana Reports on the 2nd Microfinance Summit in NYC

Sammie Rayner, the founder of Lumana, was asked to speak last week in New York. Here she provides a report of her experience. SeaMo will be hosting Lumana on February 18th at our Microfinance and Microbrews series in Seattle.

“The 2nd Microfinance and Sustainable Development Summit was held in New York City last week and provided an opportunity for foundations, corporations, and nonprofits to come together to discuss the challenging issues and innovative strategies involved in the growing microfinance and sustainable investment industry. With heads of Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley as well as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Acumen Fund to name a few, the conference brought together some of the best minds working together on the challenge of global poverty alleviation.

Lumana was thrilled to be invited by the conference hosts to speak for a “Models that Work” panel alongside other respected entrepreneurs. We are a Seattle-based microfinance and community development organization working to provide innovate solutions to alleviating poverty in Ghana. As the only African-focused organization represented on the panel, Lumana presented a powerful argument for the importance of returning to the roots of microfinance and focusing on a relationship-based model with an emphasis on client education.

Overall, we learned that our vision was shared with other members of the microfinance community and we were pleased to see other organizations looking at innovative ways to use microfinance as a vehicle to deliver other needed services. Microfinance can’t be the only platform for development, but it is essential for enabling the poor to reach a higher level of economic stability in order to feel comfortable taking larger risks. We are in the process of creating new partnerships so that we can take a wholistic approach to development; but if there was one key takeaway, it was that our relationship based approach is the strongest pillar of our success.

The Lumana team ended the week with a productive meeting with the Community Development Finance group at Deutsche Bank. Although their involvement in the industry is more on the commercial side, we find many ways in which we could collaborate with them in the future.”

© 2010 SeaMo: Connecting the Microfinance Community.