{"product_id":"9781250817228","title":"We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky : The Seductive Promise of Microfinance by Mara Kardas-Nelson","description":"In 2005, pop star Bono proclaimed, \"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Give a woman microcredit, she, her husband, her children and her extended family will eat for a lifetime.\" By the mid-2000s, it had become international development dogma that microfinance - very small, high-interest loans - was the way to end poverty. The UN had dubbed 2005 the year of microcredit. A year later, when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on microfinance, he proclaimed that tiny loans would \"put poverty in museums.\"It was a beautiful vision. But there was just one problem: microfinance doesn't work - at least not as promised.   Mara Kardas-Nelson's We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky is a story about unintended consequences, blind optimism, and the decades-long ramifications of seemingly small policy choices that reverberate around the world. It is a story of poor women doing their best to make ends meet under the toughest circumstances, and of international development workers, funders and advocates - from Bono to Bill Gates to Bill Clinton - who promise a brighter future with a quick-fix solution that may ultimately trap poor people in poverty. The book is deeply rooted in the deeply immersive narratives of women who take out microfinance loans in Sierra Leone; their stories are set against a detailed history of the meteoric rise of Muhammad Yunus' lofty vision and the gradual shift from a small non-profit program to a booming for-profit industry. We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky puts in harsh relief the questions we all should have been asking for decades: who makes money off microfinance - and more importantly, who, and what, gets left behind?\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44581484921010,"sku":"9781250817228","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781250817228.jpg?v=1720882898","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781250817228","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}