Doughnuts Defeating Poverty Summary

In Nicholas Kristof's “Doughnuts Defeating Poverty” he claims that without a bank the people in poor African countries have no way to manage money. I agree with Nicholas Kristof's point of view on the topic, but at the same time I disagree with him. He uses the Nasoni family in the southern African nation of Malawi as a vocal point for his argument. They were a poor family consisting of Alfred Nasoni and his wife, Biti Rose, and their seven children. It became five children after two die. They were so poor in fact that they had to pull their eldest son out of school in fourth grade because they couldn’t afford to pay (five dollars a term). The Nasoi’s had farm land to plant, but was to poor for seeds to fill it up. Regardless of the fact that his family was starving Alfred (the father) still managed to spend two dollars a week on moonshine, cigarettes, and

CARE is an international aid group. They now serve some six million people in 58 countries. It’s where the village savings and loans come from. Biti and 19 other members met weekly and each deposited the equivalent of about 10 cents. The money was then lent out to members, and CARE coached them on how to start small businesses. So Biti took out a loan of two dollars and used it to make doughnuts to sell around the village for two cents each. “People really liked my doughnuts,” she noted. (Kristoff par. 6) The doughnuts soon started to make her a profit of several dollars a day. Alfred enlightened by his wife began growing and selling vegetables. It turns out that they both make as excellent business people. After their profits started to rocket up Alfred decided to stop all his bad habits. They now had the money to buy all the resources they needed. The seeds, fertilizer, and everything else they needed, in addition they could also lease out two acers of their land. Now they hire up to ten workers for the farm harvesting cart full of