An article by Roshaneh Zafar of Kashf (our investment in microfinance in Pakistan) about Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus appeared in a recent issue of the Pakistani daily The Nation. Roshaneh’s work has been inspired in large part by Dr. Yunus, and both continue to work to demonstrate the bankability of the poor.

Congratulations to Judith Rodin and The Rockefeller Foundation, a founding partner who provided seed capital to launch Acumen Fund. This article in The Economist highlights Dr. Rodin’s unrelenting approach to building on the best of Rockefeller history and re-inventing it to mirror the new realities of a global and interconnected economy. We’re proud to be associated with Rockefeller Foundation and are excited to see this new conversation taking place the world over.

At Acumen Fund’s recent five-year celebration, Suketu Mehta (the author of “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found“) shared his insights about Acumen Fund’s work. His keynote remarks appear below.

On July 27, 2005, Bombay experienced the highest recorded rainfall in its history – 37 inches of rain in one day. The torrent showed up the best and the worst about the city. Hundreds of people drowned. But unlike the situation after Katrina hit New Orleans, there was no widespread breakdown of civic order; even though the police was absent, the crime rate did not go up. That was because Bombayites were busy helping each other. Slumdwellers went to the highway and took stranded motorists into their homes and made room for one more person in shacks where the average occupancy is seven adults to a room. Volunteers waded through waist-deep water to bring food to the 150,000 people stranded in train stations. Human chains were formed to get people out of the floods. People stood on the streetcorners to hand out packets of food and water to commuters walking home. Most of the government machinery was absent, but nobody expected otherwise. Bombayites helped each other, because they had lost faith in the government helping them. On a planet of city dwellers, this is how most human beings are going to live and cope in the twenty-first century. (more…)