Microfinance Roundup 9/24

A couple of exciting initiatives were announced today, both made possible through grants from Seattle’s very own philanthropy hegemon.

• CGAP, as a part of their mission to “advance financial access for the world’s poor”, has announced new benchmarks for making mobile banking available to the poor. As CGAP CEO Elizabeth Littlefield describes, “The brick and mortar bank branch system can only go so far. With cell phone service and a local shop handling the cash, mobile banking can reach every village and barrio in the developing world.” Link to press release
• University of Maryland is announcing that they have been awarded the grant to conduct a survey of six recent microfinance projects of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (more)

Why so much attention paid to the Gates Foundation? Well, aside from its obvious impact here in Seattle and internationally, we are also working on securing a speaker from their financial services division to present at an upcoming SeaMo event.

So stay tuned! We’ll let you know as soon as we have it confirmed…