Mainstreaming Microfinance : How Lending to the Poor Began, Grew and Came of Age in Bolivia
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The history of the microfinance movement in Latin America is brought to life through the lens of the Bolivian experience in Mainstreaming Microfinance. Microcredit in Bolivia grew and became successful in only a decade, lifting an enormous segment of the country's population into the financial mainstream in the process. The example of its high-achieving institutions charted a course for the development of the international microfinance field. Drawing on participant interviews, Elisabeth Rhyne details how Bolivia's special breed of social entrepreneurs found the keys to unlock the huge unmet demand of informal clients. She explores how these social activists shaped the character of the institutions that now dominate Bolivia's microfinance sector, and traces how these institutions proved that lending to microenterprises could become a commercial business. Rhyne investigates the transformation of NGOs into formal financial institutions, led by the creation of BancoSol, and closely examines microfinance under the conditions of commercialization and competition that have altered the dynamics of the new industry.
IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Why Bolivia? Why Microfinance?11A Sketch of Bolivian Microfinance in 1999152Microfinance in the Time of Adjustment353Making Contact: Prodem Learns to Serve Microenterprises554Builders of Economic Democracy815The Bolivia Model of Microfinance Transformation: Ideals and Reality1056Competition, Commercialization, and the Crisis in Microfinance1357Reassessing the Mission: A Search for New Frontiers1598Yes, But Is It Development?1799What We Have Learned199Bibliography221Index227
