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OP-ED
Nobel Laureates and Students Defending Human Rights, One Step at a Time
By Kerry Kennedy*
CHICAGO, Illinois, U.S. - I spent Monday morning in the library of Chicago's Lincoln Park High School, listening to students talk about what the word "hero" means to them. This wasn't any normal school day - in a few moments they would meet Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the father of micro-lending and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
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Gender Empowerment Still Lags Far Behind in Global Village
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS - When the United Nations concluded a two-week session highlighting the plight of rural women last week, the meetings singled out both the achievements and shortcomings of the ongoing relentless battle for gender equality in a world still dominated - and overwhelmingly ruled - by men.
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KENYA
Microloans, Greenhouses Help Women Cope with Climate Change
By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI - At Gakoromone Market in Meru, in Kenya’s Eastern Province, Ruth Muriuki arrives in a pickup full of tomatoes and cabbages despite the scarcity of rainfall in the area, thanks to the greenhouse technology she uses on her farm – and microcredit.
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U.S.
A Credit Union to Bail Out People, Not Big Banks
By Judith Scherr
SAN FRANCISCO, California - Occupy activists from Wall Street to San Francisco's financial district have dramatised their anger with big financial institutions by blocking JP Morgan Chase Bank doorways, dancing atop Wells Fargo counters, pitching a tent in a Bank of America lobby, hanging banners across Citibank windows, and accompanying the actions with the now-familiar chant "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out."
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MAURITIUS
The Decline of Consumer Cooperatives
By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS - Amateurism, high prices, mismanagement, and a limited product range have discouraged Inderjeet Rajcoomarsingh, the former chairman of the Mauritius Agricultural Cooperative Federation, from shopping at cooperative stores.
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ZIMBABWE
Microcredit Aggravates 'January Disease'
By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO - Thomas Dlakama has experienced what he calls "January disease" all his working life. This phenomenon afflicts millions in Zimbabwe, and its symptoms include an empty purse, rising blood pressure among irascible breadwinners, and a general inexplicable hope of manna from heaven.
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SWAZILAND
Small Loans for Young Entrepreneurs to Help Fight Crisis
By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE - While the Swazi economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, the government is banking on the future by providing funds to help young people set up businesses.
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MALAWI
Women’s Education the Path to the Presidency
By Travis Lupick and Emma Mwasinga
BLANTYRE - On an elegant veranda adorned with a red carpet, Malawi’s Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend Chrissie Mtokoma was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. But now decades later Banda is a likely contender for the country’s presidency in 2014, while Mtokoma lives in poverty.
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U.S.
Federal Court Grants Legal Victory to Transgender People
By Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA, Georgia - When Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman formerly known as Mr. Glenn Morrison, told her supervisors at the Georgia state legislature where she served as a legislative editor that she would start coming to work dressed as a woman, she was fired.
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HONDURAS
Indigenous Cooperatives Cultivate Success
By Thelma Mejía*
INTIBUCÁ, Honduras - Thanks to the quality and freshness of their produce, indigenous Lenca farmers in western Honduras are regular suppliers of seven supermarket chains. This year they won the National Environmental Prize, in the community initiatives category.
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EUROPE
Co-ops Off to a Promising Start
By Claudia Ciobanu
PRAGUE - A small wave of consumer cooperatives is rising in Central and Eastern Europe, attempting to provide food that is locally produced and healthy, and to build conviviality.
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Nicaragua Sows Quality Seeds to Reap Quantity
By Danilo Valladares
MANAGUA - "Using high quality seed, I harvested 20 quintals (one quintal = 100 pounds), while with ordinary seed I only get 10 quintals," Vilma Rodríguez, a beneficiary of a seed production programme in the northwestern Nicaraguan province of Estelí, told IPS.
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SPAIN
Self-Financed Communities "A Tool for Building Trust"
By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain - On the first Sunday of every month, Abdoulaye Fall, from Senegal, meets a group of people in Barcelona, to contribute money to a common fund or to take out a loan. This is one of 60 self-financed communities in Spain, an alternative to traditional banking systems that is having a powerful social effect.
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ARGENTINA
Women Build New Opportunities in Cooperatives
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES - Forged in the 2001-2002 social and economic crisis, cooperatives in Argentina are becoming a fast track to women's participation in what were traditionally regarded as male spheres.
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Millions Stand to Benefit from Farmers' Co-ops
By Elizabeth Whitman
UNITED NATIONS - The 925 million people who went hungry in 2010 are just one facet of an ever-worsening food security crisis. Both food producers and consumers face the consequences of price volatility and unsustainable agricultural practices - challenges that leave leaders on local and global levels alike seeking sustainable models for agriculture.
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Thousands of microfinance institutions serve tens of millions of the world's poor, through massive operations in rural South Asia to fledgling enterprises in West African towns. This small-scale loan movement aimed at alleviating poverty can offer life-changing potential for people who would otherwise find it difficult to obtain loans from the traditional banking sector. But microcredit is not a miracle solution to ending global poverty. If high interest rates prevail, putting recipients at risk of repeat borrowing and cycles of debt, microfinance can also have unintended consequences. IPS tracks the spread of microcredit and its impact across the global South.

Microcredit Summit Campaign
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THE WORLD SUMMIT ON MICROCREDIT AND THE FUTURE OF FINANCIAL INCLUSIVENESS
By Soraya Rodriguez Ramos (*)

MADRID, Nov  (IPS)  Opening a small shop in a town in Bangladesh, founding an artisans cooperative in Peru, setting up farm in sub-Saharan Africa, or encouraging the formation of economic alliances of women anywhere in the world -these are concrete examples of the goals of microcredit, a new financial system set in motion decades ago in Bangladesh by Professor Muhammad Yunus, a social leader who was awarded the Asturias Prize in 1998 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

MICROFINANCE GROWS UP
By Sam Daley-Harris (*)

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (IPS) The original Microcredit Summit was held in 1997. When delegates gathered nine years later at the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax, Canada in 2006, it had just been announced that Muhammad Yunus would share the Nobel Peace Prize with Grameen Bank, the institution he founded decades before.

 

 

 

 

 

Microcrédito en Español
Global Microcredit Summit
Microfinance & Gender: Women's World Banking
CGAP: Microfinance Gateway
Microcredit: Myth Manufactured
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IPS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AECID) and the Microcredit Summit CampaignAECID - Gobierno de España