ABSTRACT
In Sanjay Karki’s role as Deputy Director for the Nepal office of Mercy Corps, he had worked on a number of poverty reduction programs. But his current initiative presents the most daunting challenges he has yet faced. One of the most promising innovations in poverty alleviation was the concept of microfinance, the provision of small-scale loans and other financial services to poor entrepreneurs. And although the government of Nepal strongly supported microfinance models, a decade-long civil war ending in 2006 had severely disrupted government services and worsened poverty. In the terai, or plains, of Nepal, government and non-profit microfinance institutions are able to access the population densities and transportation infrastructure necessary to operate poverty relief programs. However, in the rugged and undeveloped mid-mountain and high-mountain regions where Sanjay is hoping to establish microfinance activities, little is being done to help the poor.
