Our Blog

The Ultimate (Social) Performance Review: Impact in India

Friday, September 30, 2011 - 12:42

Dr. Marcela Gutierrez recently returned from India, where she completed a Bankers without Borders® volunteer assignment for a 10-branch microfinance organization. Dr. Gutierrez used her skills and expertise to help the organization evaluate how their program helps the poor. My interest in microfinance started when I first heard about Kiva on National Public Radio. Next, my daughter, a sociology student, took a class on microfinance, visited programs in the Dominican Republic and Belize, and taught me a lot about how microfinance institutions (MFIs) operate. I started researching opportunities... Read More

Mobility and Microfinance in Kenya

Thursday, August 11, 2011 - 09:00

Kim Kerry-Tyerman is a volunteer for Grameen Foundation’s Bankers without Borders® initiative who was based in Ghana and Kenya for eight weeks to help the BwB team develop relationships with local organizations (companies, associations, microfinance clubs and institutions of higher education) there.  She recently posted a blog about her experience working in Kenya; an excerpt from that post is below, with a link to the full post.  If you’d like to read her first two postings about her BwB experience in Ghana, you can read Part 1 and Part 2. Many find it difficult not to be condescending about... Read More

Experiencing Microfinance in Ghana, Part II

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - 17:44

Kim Kerry-Tyerman is a volunteer for Grameen Foundation’s Bankers without Borders® initiative, based in Ghana and Kenya for eight weeks to help the BwB team develop relationships with local organizations (companies, associations, microfinance clubs and institutions of higher education) there. She recently posted a blog about her experience working with another BwB volunteer on behalf of Grameen Ghana, helping to implement a financial-modeling approach by Grameen Foundation that we hope to replicate at microfinance institutions (MFIs) throughout the world; an excerpt from that post is below,... Read More

Experiencing Microfinance in Ghana

Thursday, June 30, 2011 - 15:39

Kim Kerry-Tyerman is a volunteer for Grameen Foundation's Bankers without Borders® initiative, based in Ghana and Kenya for eight weeks to help the BwB team develop relationships with local organizations (companies, associations, microfinance clubs and institutions of higher education) there.  A graduate student in public policy at Mills College in Oakland, CA, Kim is a former AmeriCorps VISTA fellow, where she researched strategic volunteerism at the Taproot Foundation. She has dual citizenship in the US and the UK, and has volunteered on several community development projects throughout... Read More

It's Gonna Be Ghana: Out in the Field

Monday, May 9, 2011 - 08:00

Lynda Barton is spending six months volunteering with MOTECH Ghana through Grameen Foundation’s global volunteer corps, Bankers without Borders. This is Part II of a two-part series. If you haven't yet, you can read part 1. I’m in my fourth week now and have had the opportunity to visit our field sites in the Upper East Region of Ghana to see Grameen Foundation's Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) initiative in action.  These are some of the most remote areas in Ghana, where MOTECH really makes a difference for expecting mothers.  We visited 12 facilities during my three days in... Read More

It’s Gonna Be Ghana: First Steps to Living the Dream

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 - 13:39

Lynda Barton is spending six months volunteering with MOTECH Ghana through Grameen Foundation’s global volunteer corps, Bankers without Borders.  This is Part I of a two-part series.  It’s amazing to realize that you can completely change your life in fewer than 30 days when you have the passion and motivation to do so.  We often set our own limitations and roadblocks, but I think we can achieve anything we set our mind to.  We might just need some patience and flexibility along the way, but once you take that first brave step, a whole new world opens up to you.  Perhaps like many other... Read More

Impressions of an Intern

Friday, December 10, 2010 - 16:59

Ayesha Abbasi was an intern on Grameen Foundation’s Marketing and Communications team from August through November of this year. A senior at American University's Kogod School of Business, Ayesha wrote this blog post as she was preparing to graduate in December.    As I walked into the Grameen Foundation office in Washington, DC on my first day back in August, I remember being captivated by the vibrant images of microfinance borrowers from around the globe. One by one, I closely examined the portraits hanging on the walls, trying to understand the relationship between the organization and... Read More

Volunteers Lend Expertise to Help Certify the Progress out of Poverty Index™ (PPI™)

Monday, September 20, 2010 - 15:42

Preeti Wali is Communications Officer at the Grameen Foundation Social Performance Management Center (SPMC). She is based in Washington, DC. Grameen Foundation is leveraging the value of volunteers to certify the use of the Progress out of Poverty Index™ (PPI™) by MFIs around the globe. We‘re recruiting and providing specialized training to a reserve corps of Bankers without Borders volunteers preparing them to document and gather the necessary information to apply the PPI Standards of Use through a certification process to PPI users. We’ve just started this process through a pilot... Read More