Editorial – Microfinance; community foundations

Malcolm Hayday

In 1993 Pierre Calame, President of the Fondation pour le progres de l’homme, told a conference in Paris, ‘The most worrying aspect of the present crisis is that, for the first time in history, the rich no longer need the poor.’ Five years later he might have expanded on this to say that in an age of globalization and the Internet, multinational corporations and financial institutions no longer need nation states.

But if we are to seek to live in a civil society, we must recognize that we are all in this together. Do we accept increasing insecurity in our working lives, in the way we live, or do we believe that something can be done? A growing number of people see stronger local communities as one part of the answer.

 
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Editorial – June 1998

Michael Brophy