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> Posted by Shari Berenbach, Director, Office of Microenterprise Development at USAID

This post is part of the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Expert Exchange: Building A Movement Toward Financial Inclusion by 2020, cultivating conversation around the goal of reaching full financial inclusion by 2020. For further questions about this series, write to , Fellow, Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International.

There is a wonderful Dr. Seuss book that I used to read to my daughter when she was little. I think the spirit of the book captures the critical place that microfinance finds itself in right now. It’s called Yertle the Turtle and other Stories.

When I was CEO of the Calvert Foundation, I began to read the book as a metaphor for my own work, and I see that even more strongly now from my vantage point as Director of the Office of Microenterprise Development at USAID.

In the book, Yertle plays an eponymous king whose kingdom is the size of a small pond.  He convinces the turtles in his pond to stack themselves underneath him so that he can see further and expand his kingdom. At each height, Yertle looks around and declares, “I’m ruler of all that I see.” His world continues to expand, and his vision for his kingdom grows to fit that world. Read the rest of this entry »