FIGHTING POVERTY
I had spent the past 20 or so years of my life volunteering and working on both small-scale and large-scale development programs that help reduce poverty in the Philippines. As I reflect on what I have done, perhaps it was not enough. At the moment, I am involved with the microfinance sector. From its humble beginnings as a poverty reduction project, microfinance today has become a big profit-making industry. Of course, there are groups that engage in microfinance as a tool for poverty reduction, but there are now organizations that view microfinance as a profit-making activity and engage in it guised in corporate social responsibility. But has it helped reduce poverty? That's a hard question to answer. If we take a look at the poverty incidence and its magnitude in the Philippines, we will notice that it has increased despite the proliferation of microfinance and other programs implemented by the government to help reduce poverty. The microfinance sector boast...