THE POVERTY TRAP

THE POVERTY TRAP is an investigative work that provides a critical look at microfinance, an idea championed by Muhammad Yunus in the 1970s. In the '70s Bangladesh was hit by severe floods and famine. Yunus created Grameen Bank, known as the "bank of the poor," in order to give small loans to the local population, mostly to women (the men would just drink the loan away.) The idea is that they would use these small loans to start local businesses that would in turn lift them out of poverty.

It became a hugely popular program, one eventually heralded by Obama, Oprah, and Bono. But there was a problem. When journalist Mara Kardas-Nelson decided to research criminalized petty debt in Sierra Leone, she stumbled across women being threatened by the police, and sometimes put in jail, when they couldn't pay off their microfinance debts. This launched her into an investigation into the industry. She learned that big banks had morphed a pro-poor program into a for-profit business over just a few decades. Millions of women across the developing world are now trapped in layers of debt thanks to high interest, quick turnaround loans; some commit suicide, others put their children to work.

Kardas-Nelson interviewed key players, including Muhammad Yunus himself; she also met insiders with growing doubts. How did the world's most famous anti-poverty program come to look more like a predatory payday lending scheme? Why does microfinance continue despite mounds of evidence that it doesn't work? Through a combination of big-picture analysis and close reporting, THE POVERTY TRAP will provide a vivid depiction of microfinancing's victims and uncover the truth of the practice.

Mara Kardas-Nelson is an award winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, The Nation, Al Jazeera, The Mail & Guardian, and many others. She has acted as research assistant for Michael Pollan and Naomi Klein.