Jeff Ashe at Wellesley Uplift Academy Workshop Aug 7, 2006
Jeffrey Ashe, manager of community finance at Oxfam America, gave a presentation at the Uplift Academy workshop in Wellesley, MA Aug 7 on his Savings For Change program as well as more general issues of NanoFinance. His references to the person to his lower right are to Francis Moore Lappe, author of Living Democracy.
Jeff was one of the early pioneers in the field of microfinance, and is now coordinating a group of innovators in the field of savings-led microfinance. In this model, women save their own money, manage it themselves, and retain all capital and interest in their own village. Although the dollar amount of such savings-led activities is less than debt-based microfinance, the net transformatioinal value can be greater, as women learn of their own ability to work together and earn their own income and interest. This is also of interest for its "viral" spread potential. Needing no external capital or accounting, women can teach each other how to do this… Note that in Mali, Jeff points out that of the 1000 groups started, 400 have started "spontaneously" by women teaching other women how to do this. The Uplift Academy is interested in how this "nanofinance" pattern can be propagated using network technologies, (such as Blip TV).
This is an unedited tape of his talk, which will be edited into a more concise overview later.