12.07.2015 Views

From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

FROM POVERTY TO POWERFINANCE AND VULNERABILITYSaving for a rainy day and borrowing when hard times strike havealways been strategies used by people living in poverty <strong>to</strong> reduce theirvulnerability <strong>to</strong> shocks. In recent years, the failure of financial systems<strong>to</strong> meet the needs of poor communities in many countries has led <strong>to</strong>the creation of a new phenomenon, microfinance, which was drivenfirst by civil society organisations and ‘social entrepreneurs’ and isincreasingly being picked up by mainstream financial institutions andthe state.Access <strong>to</strong> credit is critical <strong>to</strong> any business, however small, whilebeing able <strong>to</strong> save and borrow enables poor people <strong>to</strong> smooth outthe sudden peaks and troughs in their income and expenditurethat can inflict short-term hardship on a family, such as job loss,sickness, funerals, or weddings. However, conventional financialmarkets systematically exclude many poor people. Banks rarely havebranches where poor people live, they require onerous collateral ordeposits, or they will not deal in small loan amounts. Gender or ethnicbias frequently has a large part <strong>to</strong> play. This financial exclusion wasexacerbated by the structural adjustment programmes in the 1980sand 1990s, which shut down or privatised state-owned banks, includingso-called ‘development banks’ which had offered subsidised loans <strong>to</strong>farmers and others.Poor people’s needs are often tiny in financial terms,but are critical <strong>to</strong>their well-being. A shoe-shiner who cannot afford <strong>to</strong> buy his brushes220

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!