Over the last three years, I’ve visited nearly two dozen countries on five of the seven continents. I lived and worked in the Philippines for eight months, Ghana for another six, and Kenya for exactly one year. In addition, I spent around six months backpacking through various a dozen far-flung Read more…
This is part two of a two-part post on microfinance. Part one can be read here In the last post, I gave a rundown of the mechanics of microfinance and explained the criticism of high interest rates. Another criticism came from development economists like Dean Karlan, founder of Innovations for Read more…
This is part one of a two-part post on microfinance. Through Kiva and Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation, microfinance became my entrée into this world. I knew very little about microfinance prior to finding Kiva, other than what I had seen on an episode of Frontline highlighting the company’s early Read more…
This is part one of a two-part post on getting involved in international development work. Read part one here. Trying to answer these questions – at first in vain, and, a few years later, more successfully – helped me so much that I have dispensed this same advice a dozen Read more…
This is part one of a two-part post on getting involved in international development work. Read part two here. One day back in May 2009, I was sitting at my desk at my office on Boylston Street in downtown Boston reading Next Billion. I had decided the week before that Read more…
On Sunday, I leave Nairobi for Thailand, where I will spend a month visiting various beaches and diving various reefs. Of the many transitions I have documented on this blog, this one is most significant, as it is the most final. After Southeast Asia, I return to the United States Read more…
Around the world, money talks. In some places, it speaks in a whisper; in others, it is like your humble correspondent at a party after one too many dark and stoney’s – loud and obnoxious. And in Kenya, many, if not all, businesses, will at some point find themselves deciding Read more…
