To Profit or Not to Profit

According to Mr Chu, “to roll back poverty rather than to merely alleviate it”, any solution needs to be able to reach massive numbers, deliver permanent results that can help many generations, provide continuous effort so it gets better and better at what it does, and provide continuous efficiency so it also becomes cheaper and cheaper. Mr Chu believes the only state that can offer all these four requirements is business.

From a review of a debate between the father of microfinance Mohammad Yunus and Michael Chu, former President and CEO of ACCION. Given that today’s Blog Action Day is focused on poverty, it seemed fitting to highlight this issue. 

Can we truly reach microfinance’s potential without the efficiency and scalability gains that business and for-profit models provide? Is profiting off of the poor unethical, and as Yunus argues, should we only be looking to sustain the model at the lowest possible point of surplus?

You can read the rest of the recount by Amy Rennison here at Microcapital.org.