You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘United States’ tag.
> Posted by Joshua Goldstein aka Mr. Provocative
There are no final victories when it comes to providing equal opportunities for groups that have suffered from historic discrimination and exclusion. This is true in the United States. This is true everywhere else in the world. Attitudinal barriers that belittle and marginalize, originating in class, racial, or religious prejudice, may triumphantly come down in one generation only to be resurrected in the next – or even sooner if some shock to the body politic is great enough.
Thus, watchdog groups like the Center for Financial Inclusion’s Smart Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Anti-Defamation League can never call it quits and declare victory. Backsliding into bigotry is more likely the rule than the exception with our tribal species.
To bolster this glum supposition is this example of the ongoing difficulties facing another beleaguered minority: Twenty-five years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), there is new evidence about employment discrimination from researchers at Rutgers and Syracuse University.
> Posted by Rafael Chapman, Analyst, UpSpring
Based on the latest report from the Giving USA Foundation, philanthropy efforts in the United States hit a record high in 2014 with total contributions reaching about $360 billion. Charitable giving is on the rise in the United States, as this figure represents a 7 percent increase over 2013. However, contributions to nonprofits serving Native American communities remain persistently low, representing well under 1 percent of philanthropy in the country.
The need is growing, however. The Native American population grew 27 percent from 2000 to 2010, almost three times the national average. Based on 2012 data, there are over 5 million people in the U.S. who identify themselves as American Indian or Alaskan Natives, and this number is expected to exceed 6.5 million by 2020.
More than 20 percent of Native Americans live on reservations where living conditions are far from tolerable. In these lands that have been inhabited for centuries, the average unemployment rate is well over 10 percent and nearly a third of reservations consider themselves considerably overcrowded. Moreover, due to lack of formal financial history records and conventional employment information, most residents in these reservations lack access to the traditional banking system, which has contributed to a severe unmet need for accessible capital among Native American communities.
All of this leads to the question: If living conditions are so deplorable in this growing community, why haven’t we increased our charitable contributions and attentions towards Indian country?
Myth #1: Indian gaming brings a lot of money to Native American communities
> Posted by Center Staff
Freshly published is the latest edition of the Financial Inclusion 2020 News Feed, our weekly online magazine sharing the big news in banking the unbanked. Among the stories in this week’s edition are the launch of the Citi Mobile Challenge in the Asia-Pacific region, the kick-off of this year’s microTracker survey on the microenterprise industry in the United States, and a blog post series from Ericsson on financial inclusion in Iraq. Here are a few more details:
- Following successful Citi Mobile Challenges in other regions, the Asia-Pacific iteration invites developers to submit innovative mobile banking solutions for a chance at taking their technologies into production with the support of Citi and its partners.
- The U.S. Microenterprise Census’s online microTracker survey is open, collecting and counting data on the microenterprise industry in areas including client reach, lending volume, and performance efficiency.
- A new post series on Ericsson’s “M-Commerce: the Call for Change Blog” spotlights the financing landscape in Iraq, which serves only 11 percent of adults in the country, targeting action areas like regulation, interoperability, and mobile money.
For more information on these and other stories, read the latest issue of the FI2020 News Feed here, and make sure to subscribe to the weekly online magazine by entering your email address in the right-hand menu so you can be notified when the latest issue comes out.
Have you come across a story or initiative you think we should cover? Email your ideas to Eric Zuehlke at .
> Posted by Center Staff
We may be in the heart of the summer season here in the United States, but the world of financial inclusion is hardly slowing down. Released today, the fourth issue of the Financial Inclusion 2020 News Feed shares the big news in banking the unbanked. Among its stories are recent findings on the financial performance of impact investing, an appeal from the United Nations to commit to the cooperative business model, and the launch of a national financial inclusion strategy in the Philippines. Here are a few details:
- Comprehensive analysis conducted by Cambridge Associates and the GIIN found that private impact investment funds recorded financial returns in-line with a comparative group of non-impact investing funds.
- In celebration of the International Day of Cooperatives, on Saturday United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asserted the importance of cooperatives for financial inclusion and sustainable development.
- The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) signed a memorandum of understanding on a national financial inclusion strategy last week, which provides a framework for the government and private sector to take action.
For more information on these and other stories, read the fourth issue of the FI2020 News Feed here, and make sure to subscribe to the weekly online magazine by entering your email address in the right-hand menu so you can be notified when the latest issue comes out.
Have you come across a story or initiative you think we should cover? Email your ideas to us at .
> Posted by Center Staff
Can you confidently speak to the financial inclusion of persons with disabilities (PwDs)? How about the proportion of PwDs that live below the poverty line? …The prevalence of disabilities?
The financial and economic hardships of PwDs don’t get much mainstream attention. You, if you’re like most, don’t know that in the United States, for example, about one-fifth of the population (roughly 60 million) has a disability, PwDs are twice as likely to use informal financial services like payday lenders and check cashers, the unemployment rate for PwDs is more than double the national average, and about one-third of adult PwDs live in poverty. These statistics are severe. Not to mention, current demographic shifts will result in larger older adult populations and position the incidence of disability, and the magnitude of these unmet inclusion needs, to grow.
Last week the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a mainstream U.S. financial player, announced an initiative that will work in concert with financial empowerment and disability organizations to tackle these pressing issues.
> Posted by Center Staff
Blog posts. Twitter feeds. Facebook updates. Email listservs. Google Alerts. Lunchtime conversations… We all have our ways, however handy and effective, of trying to stay abreast of what’s happening around the world. For those interested in financial inclusion, this is quite the challenge. The release of new products, partnerships, publications, and policies is a constant. But at CFI’s Financial Inclusion 2020 (FI2020) project, combing the world for the latest inclusion insights, trends, and developments is part of what we do. So, we decided to go one step further.
Starting today, each week the FI2020 team will bring you the big news in financial inclusion in an online magazine, the Financial Inclusion 2020 News Feed. We’ll pull from all over to spotlight great new stories, initiatives, videos, podcasts, and more. To give you a sense, the collection of pieces that make up this week’s edition touch on:
- JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s new report on U.S. households’ financial resilience, Weathering Volatility
- AllAfrica’s recent article on the new partnership between Tigo and Juntos in Tanzania
- The Guardian’s interactive post that visualizes borrowing trends globally
- A World Bank video on assessing if microloans really make a difference
To check out the first edition, click here, and make sure to subscribe so you can be notified when the latest issue comes out.
Have you come across a story or initiative you think we should cover? Email your ideas to us at .
> Posted by Susy Cheston, Senior Advisor, CFI
Almost three decades ago, I walked into a meeting with a loan officer at a major bank in Boston. I was running a not-for-profit dance company that was well-respected, had good governance, and had a decent business plan—but hey, it was a not-for-profit dance company with no endowment and no certainty of surviving beyond its next show. We were not a good risk on paper. My job was to persuade the loan officer to give us an unsecured line of credit based solely on our business plan and his judgment of our ability to execute against that plan. He looked at our financials, but he also sized me up. This was not data analytics, this was the old-time community bank model of a decision based on a hand shake and a relationship, a sense of trust. Truth be told, the loan officer was biased in our favor. He really loved our work and believed in what we did. That plus a few well-placed board members had gotten me in the door where a company with a similar balance sheet and risk profile would have been left out in the cold.
A few years later, I landed in El Salvador where I formed lending groups among poor, illiterate women in the relatively early days of microfinance. “Ella es buena paga” was the phrase the women used to identify someone who was known as good for paying her debts. It meant that when a vendor in the marketplace or the owner of a corner store let a customer buy something on credit, she was good for it. On the basis of a reputation as “buena paga,” the lending group would allow a woman to join them. Needless to say, those who were known as “mala paga” would be blacklisted and not permitted to join the group.
Perhaps the greatest microcredit miracle of the last century was that, thanks to these lending groups, poor women who were credit invisible were revealed as credit worthy, identified as such through social relationships and their standing in the community. It was the kind of relationship-based credit decision that I and our dance company had benefited from in Boston, but that people at the base of the pyramid had always been excluded from.
> Posted by Allyse McGrath, Senior Associate, CFI
The Facebook page of JPay, a Florida-based company that provides a range of services to inmates in the U.S. prison system, is calling for visitation pictures – photos of families and their incarcerated loved ones. Happy images seem to echo the company’s statement that JPay is “the most trusted source for connecting incarcerated individuals with family and friends”. Money transfers are one primary element of the connection that JPay and others like it provide. JPay is one of the largest providers in the burgeoning field of financial services for the 2 million-plus inmates in the U.S. prison system. These providers are changing the way that families send money to their incarcerated loved ones and also the way in which inmates receive money upon their release. But has this change been good?
For those that might not know, money sent to inmates can be used in prison for things like making phone calls, sending emails, and buying food, toiletries, and winter clothes. To give you a sense, at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington State, phone calls begin at $3.13, and emails are 33 cents. When prisoners are released, money accumulated from work in prison or sent from family and friends can be transferred onto stores of value like debit cards.
> Posted by Joshua Goldstein aka Mr. Provocative
In The New York Times last week was a story of loss and despair titled “1.5 Million Missing Black Men”. It stated: “One out of every six black men, who today should be between 25 and 54 years old, have disappeared from daily life.” Where are these men? What does this mean to the women in their communities? The answer to the first question is that they often die early or are living out much of their lives behind bars. And the answer to the second question is equally tragic and heartbreaking: In many ravaged communities, there are not enough men to be fathers and husbands. In our republic, this reality of the missing men is a profound challenge to our values, our democracy, and our future as a nation. I think there is a consensus on that.
So, you ask me: What does this terrible set of facts about an American tragedy have to do with microfinance and international development? In my opinion, an awful lot. As policy makers and practitioners, it often seems that men have disappeared from our “interventions” and work plans. Resources are focused on empowering poor women, who will work hard and take care of the children (half of whom are boys), while the men are scoundrels or losers who cannot be counted on when it comes to the family’s well-being. Why prioritize men in poverty reduction strategies? Why waste resources on this failed sex?
> Posted by Nelly Agyemang-Gyamfi, Program Coordinator, CFI
On the 6th of April, 68 financial inclusion stakeholders from 23 countries across the globe arrived in (a thankfully snowless) Boston to commence the 10th annual HBS-Accion Program on Strategic Leadership in Inclusive Finance. Over the past decade, the deeply immersive, week-long program has trained over 660 high-level executives from more than 250 organizations spanning 90 countries. As in past years, this year’s program was held on the beautiful campus of the Harvard Business School and led by world-renowned HBS professors Michael Chu and V. Kasturi Rangan. As a Center for Financial Inclusion staff member who helped organize the course, I was privileged to take part, and I offer these reflections on what I saw and learned.
Participants were exposed to a wide range of issues pertinent to inclusive finance, from managing political uncertainty to impact investing and measurement. This year, reflecting the changing landscape of inclusive finance, the course included seven new sessions including cases on China’s CreditEase, Massachusetts’ Pay-for-Success, and Peru’s Edyficar.
Facebook
Twitter
Recent Comments