The Unbreakable Leo

On Wednesday April 28 the UCLA Anderson Business School and Yale Club of Southern California co-hosted the Women in Microfinance Conference to an audience of nearly 100 people. The room was filled with women, men, students, professionals and general enthusiasts of the microfinance platform in order to make a change in the lives of low-income people in the United States and abroad. A lot of good information was given from the panelists and many audience members shared their experiences from over the years, but it seemed to fall short of a lot of peoples expectations as to what the conference should have offered.

The night opened with UCLA Anderson Professor Bhagwan Chowdhry as the Keynote Speaker as he shared his Financial Access at Birth (FAB) Campaign, where every child born in the world is given an initial deposit of $100 in an online bank account to guarantee that everyone in the world will have access to financial services. He approached the idea as potentially being tested in Uganda and Haiti where many people have little or now savings to help with today's reality of health care, food and other basic service costs. One of the campaigns overall goals is to teach habits of saving funds to ensure a more financially secure future. The idea met with stiff resistance from panelist Dean Karlan, a Professor of Economics from Yale University, who didn't see how the program would give people the incentive to save. Quickly a member of the audience aswered his question by giving examples as to who this system has already having shown promise in the UK.

After the Prof. Chowdhry concluded the rest of the speakers came one by one to pitch their organization which included such notable people as Dean Karlan, Bhalchander Vishwanath: Founder and CEO of United Prosperity, Eric Weaver: Founder and CEO of Opportunity Fund and Jon Yasuda: VP of Opportunity International. Although it seemed disheartening to be speaking about women in microfinance with absolutely no women on the panel, Jessica Jackley joined the panel late due to a flight delay from San Francisco. Some people may know Jessica as the Co-Founder of Kiva, which has set the standard for peer-to-peer internet lending. She gave her personal story on how she chose to start Kiva by adding a human touch often missed by the some of the speakers.

All of the panelist spoke of their organizations briefly and attempted to shed new light on their efforts to assist those who need. Eric Weaver spoke about how his organization was focused on teaching people in the San Francisco Bay Area about financial literacy through free classes and savings account matching. Jon Yasuda briefly spoke about Opportunity International being created for women around the world in mind. Bhalchander Vishwanath brought up the link to his website on the large screen to show how his organization uses microfinancing with a different twist of guarantees and bank cooperation to fund entrepreneurs in India. Jessica talked about how she saw a need to strengthen the ability of banks around the world to service clients in low-income situations to begin process of poverty alleviation. But the most interested speech of all came from Dean Karlan who spoke about the so-called impact of microfinance around the world and how people measure success. It seemed to most of the panelist and audience that he was the antagonist of the night, but he brought up many great points of how tests should be done to truly measure the impact microfinance has.

While many of the panelist made great points and presentations it seemed that the "women" focus of the conference was overlooked. During the question and answer portion of the night one women asked, "I thought this was suppose to be a conference about women in microfiance. Why is there only one woman on the panel?" All of the questions and comments for the rest of night ranged from ideas to get women easier access to banks, the impact it has on home life and how many women staff member the organizations employed. Another audience member talked about her experience working in Southeast Asia where microfinance is having a huge impact on the overall well-being of women involved with it say "making money to help their families has given these women a rest to hold their heads high."

Here are some facts to be noted: Opportunity International's primary focus is women in the international community, Kiva's borrowers to date are over 82% women, over two-thirds of Opportunity Fund is staffed by women, and United Prosperity borrowers are all women.

Overall I believe the conference was a great way to bring people together to speak about the issues of women, but many felt it should have given more ways to get increase female participation in the movement. Dean Karlan seemed to be the voice not often heard in these discussions about people in the movement patting themselves on the back for giving money when we should be more concerned with the realities of the long term effect. His point was to remind people that a one time loan of $200 doesn't bring a person out of poverty, but rather that it takes roughly five years to break that barrier with the first loan being the beginning of a process to a better future.