Description
Book SynopsisAs we consider the plight of our consumer-driven economy, it is easy to forget that money is about relationship: between individuals and between communities. In our current financial mess, it is worth reminding ourselves of community-based alternatives, and to look closely at microcredit, a model of peer lending to enable people to move out of poverty. From Bangladesh, from South Africa, from Ghana, and from the East End of London, we are given a worm's eye view of small scale work, of personal transformation, and the building of community. Small and local is still beautiful, and has much to teach us.
Trade ReviewJennifers book provides a very necessary look at the alternatives to big bank lending. Full of examples and intriguing facts, Jennifer engages you with a fascinating tale of money and microcredit. Recommended. (Jeremy Renals, accountant, lecturer, and writer.) This is a superb and timely book. Thoroughly researched, Jennifer Kavanagh enlivens the insights from data with real-world examples of persons who are bridging the current abyss between "money and relationship," to create new forms of personal and social wealth. In a period of lingering economic crisis, when many people in developed countries are slipping out of the middle class and into poverty, Kavanaghs book provides remedies that are practical, tested, and most of all, empowering. Money works as an asset, not an end: more than a mere exchange of value, money at its core represents the mutual commitment to values that is the basis for trust. By recovering the moral core of economics, Kavanagh has unleashed that most subversive of revolutions in which society achieves the very transformation it originally intended.(John Dalla Costa, Founding Director, Centre for Ethical Orientation Author of The Ethical Imperative: Why Moral Leadership is Good Business)
