In the recent New York Times article, "How Companies Learn your Secrets," Charles Duhigg discusses how companies can use demographics and data on personal consumption behavior to manipulate shopping habits and attract new customers. Target, for example, can predict if a customer is pregnant, what trimester she is in, and, with this information, target baby-related advertisements to her.

In 2010 SKS Microfinance went public with great excitement from the financial markets and a hail of criticism from some in the industry. The criticism centered around the idea that profit is NOT a proxy for success and an aggressive focus on growth is bad for the poor. SKS disagreed.

Solèy means sunshine in Haitian Creole. At the recent Microcredit Campaign Summit (MCS) in Valladolid, Spain, social performance in general (and the PPI specifically) were front and center, shining brightly. To that point, here is an excerpt from a blog post by Grameen Foundation President and CEO Alex Counts on the sunshine that the MCS directed to Haitian MFI Fonkoze and the Seal of Excellence.

My experiences for the past two days in Nairobi, Kenya have been eye-opening and hilarious, in many ways! After day two of an intensive training on the Progress out of Poverty Index™ (PPI™), I now better understand the PPI. This became clear during lunch time when I found myself comprehensively responding to questions about the PPI creation process, which l probably wouldn’t have done proficiently had it not been for my participation in the morning training sessions!

One of the foremost fascinating highlights has been how people misinterpret the PPI, therefore shunning it without a trial. The PPI is a 10-question poverty assessment tool that helps poverty-focused organizations to understand the poverty distribution of their clients and target clients, track poverty over time, and to adjust products and services to best serve their clients in moving out of poverty. However, I have observed that the blending of lectures, activities, and exercises is helping demystify this misinterpretation, allowing participants to understand the purpose of the tool, its construction, and how it is applied in practice.

As an Atlas Corps Fellow from Zimbabwe, currently with Grameen Foundation’s Social Performance Management Center, this trip has personally been a highly rewarding professional development experience, especially after being given a chance to facilitate a lecture, and lead a discussion. More so, it just feels great to be closer to home after about six months of being thousands of miles away.

I feel there is still so much work to be done in this quest to alleviate poverty, and after this experience I am more determined to help in the fight. This workshop has certainly broken new ground in Africa, not only here but in the ‘global village’!

 Donald Bodzo is a Atlas Corps Fellow from Zimbabwe. He is currently working with the Grameen Foundation and the Global Peace Service Alliance in Washington, DC.