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> Posted by Madeleine Dy, Program Specialist, CFI

The Investing in Inclusive Finance program at the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion explores the practices of investors in inclusive finance. Across areas including risk, governance, stakeholder alignment, and fund management, this blog series highlights what’s being done to help the industry better utilize private capital to develop financial institutions that incorporate social aims.

“What does he know that I don’t know?” This is exactly the question proponents of peer learning want to provoke. In academia, peer learning has received significant attention and new peer learning communities are sprouting up around the world. From the virtual Peer 2 Peer University, or P2PU, which was founded in 2009, to the Indian non-profit Avanti with its peer Learning Centers in India, to more informal community-driven websites like Skillshare where anyone can teach anyone else about a skill.

The Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion (CFI), the Boulder Institute of Microfinance, and Calmeadow Foundation are applying the power of peer learning in our upcoming “Governance Leadership in a Competitive World” seminar in Mexico City on October 3-4, 2013. The seminar asks MFI board members and CEOs to come together to address governance and risk challenges microfinance institutions are facing. The seminar will employ a highly interactive combination of case-based peer discussion, experienced industry speakers, and problem-solving.

Peer learning actually isn’t a new concept. It had its birth around 1916 with education thinker John Dewey’s Constructivist Theory which asserts that knowledge is created through experience, rather than through the usual teacher to student lecture and memorization. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian development guru, took it a step further with his 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which critiques traditional teaching frameworks that treat students as empty vessels into which knowledge is deposited. Freire challenged society to ensure that all participants in the classroom, both teachers and students, work together to create knowledge equitably.

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