Merigoesaround

There are many reasons why I am working for CGAP but one is to learn as much as I can about market-driven, innovative interventions that could be applied to education and health programs. Development policies in education need a large amount of fresh air. A hurrican of innovation. I have two ideas. ONE. Imagine the following: a low-income mother from Nowayoutland, she saves some money, she has to save to face shocks, such as one of her 3 kids getting sick. She is among the poorest of the poor in her community. A poverty-measurement tool confirmed so. This mother saves some money into an account opened at a microfinance institution. The microfinance insitution acts as a government agent. The mother can't touch that money: those little savings are for emergencies and for her three kids education. Each 10 dollars that she saves is matched by a dollar from the government from Nowayoutland. Isn't this like a dream safety net scheme? TWO. And now think of an exchange program that bri...

Once in my life I had a terrible crush on a Minister. The Minister of Justice. This was in Albania, some years ago. The female staff of my employer in that country, including me, loved him into pieces. While I await the results of the presidential election there I just found out via http://www.eca.al/ that my Minister won in his district. With Ministers like him European integration in the Balkans should advance much faster. But this is not the case. European integration is neither widening nor deepening. Europe seems less united than ever before. Directionless. Or maybe is just me feeling less European than some years ago.

Some weeks ago I was in Spain, in Madrid, concretely. I was there for a seminar slash conference, the new way of developing Africa, organize a conference, preferably in a country with more than 300 days of sun, running water and European bathrooms. Spain has great potential as conference destination (another idea that runs in my head is to promote Spain as the Florida of Europe, with luxury kind of assisted housing for old Japanese and Russians...down with the crisis!! this idea is great - I share IP with my friend Miguel btw, in case he is reading this). So I went to Spain for work. I learned more and more things about the industry I work for during the seminar, this sector is more commercial and complicated than I ever thought of. Spanish men...however, they are quite simple, it sufficed a nice tight dress and some make up to get a guy in the street calling me "Vaya Bombonsito" ("what a nice little sweet you are"). This kind of compliments can be sweetly told or d...

My life is my life and I live it the way I want. Partly true. We all compare ourselves to others, just like economists compare GDPs per capita. This deep reflection to say that boyfriend husband has been slightly downgraded in my personal scale since I know one of his friends is a (hot) European Space Agency ASTRONAUT. BH is an accomplished, goodlooking, caring guy...but not an astronaut. My love for BH is in absolute terms. No worries. Having a dream is the essence of happy, driven lives...but dreaming of being an astronaut and becoming one is out of reach. Or isn't? BHs spatial friend got an engineering degree, a PhD in Astrophysics and had a clear direction where he wanted to be: up there, in the space. Maybe dream chasing is what differentiates absolutely from relatively happy lives.

If there is a cool topic to be working on right now, this is it: microfinance. Forget Dambisa Moyo (even if she is quite supportive of microfinance) and the Easterly-Sachs online dramas, the development world is waiting for an answer on what microfinance can and cannot do. The answer is unfortunately blurred but on the way of being clarified. I think there are three groups of constituencies that are either helping or damaging the microfinance world. The rigorous observers: Some must-read blogs ( this and another one at PSD blog) this week portrayed a recent paper by some of the members of this group. There is good news for microfinance: the existing business owners of a Hyderabad slum appear to use microcredit to expand their businesses, durables spending (i.e. investment) and business profits increased. Unfortunately, there is a down side and some bad news. On the down side, the introduction of microcredit had little impact on non-financial aspects of development (health, education ...