For those of you who are interested in microfinance (I hope everyone reading this blog), there’s an article on the Huffington Post written by Alex Raksin worth reading. It came as a result of discussion at the World Economic Summit in Davos and talked about how microfinance may be one of the few areas of growth in this worldwide economic crisis we’re experiencing.

Where should leaders look to find a new “transformative vision for international finance”?

The answer [...] seems to me to be obvious, even though it’s admittedly in one of the last places mainstream economists would have looked before the crash: to microfinance.

Although microfinance was until recently derided as little more than an idealistic gamble, it embodies, more than any other financial system today, the very best ideals of early Western capitalism.

What began as a philanthropic movement to empower the working poor by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, has evolved into a new class of social entrepreneurs who have shown that capitalism, especially when driven by creativity and social conscience, can generate significant returns in every sense of the word — financial, ecological, ideological and cultural.

Head over and read the whole article.

Do you think the global financial crisis will hurt microfinance? Or do you think microfinance will experience strong growth during the downturn?