Malcolm:
Nice to hear you are still active. As we say here, growing old is not for sissies.
But it has its advantages such as disentangling ourselves from some of our professional involvements. A negative side is having more time to obsess about the sad state of affairs in many parts of the world and especially the sad state of politics in both of our countries. It seems that the liberal project we have all been a part of in terms of promoting democracy and a set of international institutions to glue us together is under attack in many places. The miserable situation of millions of refugees and immigrants is an international disgrace with few signs that effective solutions are within reach.
All the best. Dick
From: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 4, 2018 5:06 PM
To: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com; Beatriz Esperanca
Subject: Re: [MFP] looking for contact info for Prof. Malcolm Harper
Thank you Jami, and all. I am alive (what happens to e-mail addresses when one is no longer alive I wonder ?), not much to do with MF (or is it FI ?) these days, although I am still Chair of M-Cril in India, otherwise, mainly involved with 'our' children in India, (www.orissa.org.uk), trying, slowly and erratically to extract myself from it all, it's hard to start things and even harder to stop them, working as junior and very part-time co-author on a couple of books, low cost housing in India and 'can doing well and doing good mix', the odd bit of editing and reviewing, walking the dogs, failing to do things in the garden, regretting my numerous grandchildren's failure (thus far) to produce great grandchildren, generally enjoying our extraordinarily warm summer and being a bit thankful that I won't have to live with the mess the world seems to be in.
Malcolm
From: "Jami Solli jamisolli@gmail.com [MicrofinancePractice]" <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com>
To: Beatriz Esperanca <beatriz.esperanca@opensocietyfoundations.org>; MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, 4 August 2018, 14:42
Subject: Re: [MFP] looking for contact info for Prof. Malcolm Harper
Many many thanks to all who have replied: the good Prof. Has been found .
And a special thanks to Chuck: as a consumer advocate i still mention your work and remember your kind assistance helping me calculate the true cost of Nigerian micro loans one of which was Wonga like at over 800%.
Miss all your dialogue and discussions too.
Would be great to hear what you are all working on now even if it is hobby farming.
Best regards
Jami
On Sat, Aug 4, 2018 at 7:19 AM jaashe@aol.com [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Dear Chuck,
Wonderful to hear from you. Thank you for launching Microfinance Practice. For years Microfinance Practice was the hotbed of exchange about microfinance. I applaud your efforts at bringing the microfinance field to task with you efforts at having MFIs be transparent about their pricing - turned out there was not much of a stomach for transparency. My latest forays into the field have been in Nepal where the robust microfinance community there is doing all the MFI things - 10 MFIs in the same easy to access village, poaching from each other, etc. - but at 18% per annum with declining interest loans.
On another note - after a huge investment in linking savings group members to banks and MFIs in El Salvador and Guatemala we found that there was 49 times more loans in the savings groups. In El Salvador, the money mobilized in the savings groups was more than enough to take care of their needs.... (In Guatemala the demand for loans was greater than the size of the fund and our old friend Compartamos was playing the same tricks in Guatemala as it had in Mexico to meet the demand - much to the detriment of the Mayan women in the groups,)
My latest thinking is that we stop coming up with our bright ideas and talk to the leaders of ROSCAS and ASCAS and learn from them. My graduate students have fanned across immigrant communities in the USA and we learned that there is a vast ROSCA enterprise underway with billions of dollars saved and distributed across America all without our intervention. Why not start with the brilliant, committed and innovative ROSCA leaders and see where that takes us.
Another emerging thinker is Mauricio Miller. Mauricio says that the most useful role of an outsider is helping communities and families chronicle what they are doing as far as savings and borrowing and education and employment and helping each other and then nudging this along. He fires anyone found "helping."
See his piece What do Liberia, Detroit and Oakland have in common.
Sound like you are in a better place with your goats, bees and chickens.
If any of you are inclined read a few pages of my book on savings groups - see BK interior. Share the link with.
Keep in touch,
Jeff
Jeffrey Ashe
jaashe@aol.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Waterfield chuck.waterfield@gmail.com [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com>
To: MFP <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Aug 3, 2018 6:02 pm
Subject: Re: [MFP] looking for contact info for Prof. Malcolm Harper
Hello Jami,
Though the MFP Listserve has only had 12 messages in all of 2018, there are still 2,708 members (who used to post over 2,000 message a year in the early 2000's). Malcolm is one of those members, and he used to post about the Wonga payday lenders in the UK to get us all arguing (I just checked and Wonga's short term interest rate is 300% per year by the US-APR formula and 1,509% by the British formula).
Malcolm's email address a few years ago was: malcolm.harper@btinternet.com
Since this address could be found by any MFP member who searched the archives, I feel it is appropriate to post publicly.
Regards… as I go back into my bliss of not thinking about the World of Microfinance,
Chuck Waterfield
… who started up this Listserve 17 years ago
.... who worked in Microfinance for exactly 30 years
… who now takes care of his goats, bees, and chickens and never gets on an airplane and almost never leaves his time zone
On Aug 3, 2018, at 1:11 PM, Dale Lampe dlampe21@yahoo.co.uk [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Last I saw him he was at the Carsey Institute at NH. May want to check with them. Then again he may be retired.
Dale
On Friday, 3 August 2018 12:04:07 EDT, Jami Solli jamisolli@gmail.com [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Greetings,
Anyone have this? Someone I know wants to chat....
thanks!
Jami Solli
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