Event: Beyond Microfinance:

"The Next Frontier For Sustainable Poverty Alleviation"

Rosalind Copisarow
Chair of the Board, Global Village Energy Partnership; former Chief Executive, International Development Enterprises.

18th September, 6.30-8pm. DFID, 1 Palace Street, London SW1E 5HE

Presentation
When micro-finance first started, enabling ‘access to finance’ was considered virtually automatically to lead to ‘poverty alleviation’. Over time, however, the many important innovations increasing access to finance have not translated into the same levels of poverty alleviation. More importantly, the vast majority of the world’s unbanked will remain below the reach of MFIs unless an integrated package of support is made available to them. In her presentation, Rosalind will provide examples of organizations that have successfully combined micro-finance with other support tools and show how this approach could well be the next big breakthrough towards eliminating global poverty.

Speaker
After 15 years in investment banking with Citigroup, HSBC and JP Morgan, followed by 13 years in micro-finance largely pioneering cutting edge products and models of delivery, Rosalind is now on her third career, most recently as Chief Executive of International Development Enterprises (IDE). She is applying her business and financial skills and passion for working with micro-entrepreneurs to the service of the 2 billion people either below the reach of MFIs or for whom micro-finance is inadequate as a stand-alone tool to help them out of poverty. A serial social entrepreneur, Rosalind is now starting her fourth social enterprise, to be based in the UK, having founded and led three microfinance-related organizations: Fundusz Mikro in Poland, Street UK and the Microfinance Centre for Central and Eastern Europe. Rosalind has written a number of publications, perhaps the most influential of which, “Self-Employed People in the Informal Economy: Cheats or Contributors?” (2004), offers a secure platform for the transition of UK micro-entrepreneurs into the formal economy. Rosalind holds a BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University, an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA in Latin American studies and Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2000, she was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Poland.

Information about Rosalind’s new social enterprise which packages modular kits to build decent homes with home-based income-generating opportunities and microfinance
The organization will operate in the areas of overlap between the housing, renewable energy, water and sanitation, micro-enterprise development and micro-finance sectors. Its objective is to improve the living conditions of the 2 billion people currently inhabiting shacks without water, sanitation or power, in such a way that it also builds their short term income and long term assets, leaves the lightest possible ecological footprint, and insulates them as much as possible against major political and economic risks likely to directly affect them.

Attendance:
If you are interested to attend, please register online at London Microfinance Club's site by filling in their online attendance form (No later than 10am on Friday, 12th September 2008).

http://www.microfinanceclubuk.co.uk/