Thank you for explaining the breakdown of loan ideologies. You gave a name to what I’ve found in my research on microfinance. This semester I am writing my thesis on Microlending in Bosnia–a place long forgotten by the West. What I’ve read across the board in all types of literature is that to lift oneself out of poverty it is necessary to accumulate hard assets (home, education, savings etc), but rarely if ever do any programs offer this. It has racked my brain to figure out why this common sense approach is being lost along with a bit of altruism in microfinance. Microlending is moving toward a corporate model and missing out on serving many people on the bottom. Case in point: in Bosnia human trafficking is growing LEAPS AND BOUNDS ($5-7 BILLION industry in Bosnia ALONE), but Bosnia also has at least ten of the top ranked MFI’s in the world. I added up all of the active loans in Bosnia and it came to more than 400,000 loans; about ten percent of the Bosnian population. I dug a little deeper to find that of those MFI’s the smallest tiniest NGO with the smallest number of outstanding loans (approx 3,000) offers services financial and non financial to the very poor and lends out the smallest dollar amounts. Many victims of human trafficking in Central Europe have stated the lack of financial opportunities is what caused them to naively get involved with trafficking. (Victims are promised factory jobs across a state border to only have their papers stolen and in turn sold into sex slavery). SOooooo…this would then explain why the poorest of the poor are still not getting the services they desperately need. I guess after all of my babbling I’d have to say that offering borrowers many services will help them lift themselves out of poverty. Poor people know what they need but simply lack access to resources and capital.