Founding a Movement

Founding a Movement captures the impossible dream realized by a visionary group of women who met in Mexico City at the first United Nations World Conference on Women in 1975, and then, together, created the first global women's microfinance network. Drawing on more than 80 interviews, Michaela Walsh recounts her extraordinary path as the founding president of Women's World Banking and brings alive the perseverance, confidence, and shared risk-taking that propelled the movement forward. This book illuminates the birth of a culture of trust-from Kenya to Colombia to the Philippines-where women entrepreneurs could learn from and teach each other to gain control over their economic destinies. In Walsh's words, Founding a Movement "shines a light on the value that women contribute through work, and when they support one another, to become full participants in the economy through access to financial institutions and services, and everything that goes with that access."