Milaap, an online platform that enables global microlending to India’s poor, recently launched an innovative new program it hopes will paint a brighter future.

This unfolding story is the type of good news we all need to hear. No one enjoys reading stories of AIDS orphans in Africa. It hurts to hear of a nine year old struggling to care for his younger siblings but it is the situation which has given birth to this good news story

The Mercado serves a neighborhood that has been through hard times. The Chamizal, as the neighborhood is known, never recovered from the shift of the clothing factories to Mexico (and later China) with the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Many of the women who worked in the industry lost their jobs and families are still struggling.

Throughout the developing world, women are often a quiet force...

The sex ratio in India is about 927 girls to every 1000 boys. In many states, like Haryana and Punjab, young men have to spread their nets very wide to look for wives. This situation is similar to the one faced by China when its one child policy led to many female babies being aborted.

The technological breakthroughs of the Green Revolution in the 60s and 70s sprang us forward. But our growth has slowed. Agricultural growth has missed targets by 1 percentage point for the past 4 years, and the combination of economic growth with a swelling population means more people are demanding more agricultural commodities.

Conventional wisdom tells us it’s a shame that tribals