Microfinance is the lending and borrowing of (relatively) small amounts of money. Generally, the lender is a (relatively) rich Westerner and the borrower a poor citizen of a developing country. And I don’t mean relatively poor; I mean abject poverty, where $25 to buy a goat means the difference between being able to feed your [...]

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I’ve always said that a few years abroad should be required for Americans. But recently, I’ve been meeting people who’ve spent those few years abroad but who remain remarkably closed-minded, and provincial. Maybe it’s mitigated by the years abroad, maybe the years abroad did nothing and they would have ended up this way anyway, or [...]

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