Micro-Credit, Major Impact

Written on 07/15 at 01:04 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: brown micro credit

Among my numerous ongoing projects (which include my masters thesis and starting a company) I’m also working with several Brown students to create a student-run micro-credit program in Providence, Rhode Island.  Initially, I had the idea to do something like this around 5 months ago when I read Muhammad Yunus’ autobiography Banker to the Poor.  Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh 30 years ago, and bringing micro-credit to the fore as a means of addressing poverty.  After I read his book, I began researching the possibility of starting a similar initiative locally. 

Micro-Credit Serves a Need
Basically, the idea behind micro-credit is that the world’s poorest individuals are often, by necessity, also the world’s most entrepreneurial people. In order to survive they have to find creative ways to create and sell goods or services.  What they lack, then, is not energy or ideas, but rather access to capital.  As a result, they are forced to rely on loan sharks who charge them exorbitant interest rates, keeping them in perpetual poverty no matter how successful their business is.  And of course traditional banks don’t bother providing loans to the poor, both because they view them as an unacceptable credit risk and because the transaction costs of dealing with loans as small as $10 USD are too high for them.

permanent link continue reading »


Case Study: Debs Park, California

Written on 11/21 at 10:11 PM by Andy Posner 1 comments

Filed under: brown

Note: I wrote this paper for a class at Brown called Sustainability in the Built Environment The Audubon Society has plans to build "hundreds of urban nature centers. . .by the year 2020" with the aim of "bring[ing] nature to those inner-city children with few opportunities to leave the city. . ."1 Thus when it came time to build the first of these centers at Debs Park, located 10 minutes from downtown Los Angeles, the Society wanted something that would capture its ideals and values and create a model for future development. In order to do so, the design team started with the objective of creating a building "that complemented the landscape, blend[ed] into the environment" and focused the visitor's attention on the nature trails, courtyard and Children's Garden. Yet while sustainability was a high priority from the start, the decision to seek LEED Platinum status wasn't made until a donor made a contribution specifically for that purpose. Ironically, the donation freed the designers to pursue an entirely off the grid, or building, by forcing them to meet LEED's stringent criteria. The Center's unique geographical location enabled it to be in a natural setting while remaining close enough to urban centers to be relevant and accessible to large groups of people. This is because the 17 acre site, situated in the 282-acre Debs park, is only .25 miles from a freeway, half a mile from a light rail station, and within walking distance of 30,000 school children. At the same time, however, the center is sufficiently isolated from electricity, natural gas and sewer lines (1/4 mile) to justify generating all of its energy, as well as treating all of its wastewater, onsite, without adding significantly to the cost of the project. Indeed, the final cost was only 5-7% higher than that of a conventional project, despite the fact that the Center boasts, among other things, a 23 KW PV array, a 269 DC KwH battery bank, the first "completely solar-cooled [HVAC] system in Southern California," two solar water heaters, and extensive wastewater treatment systems.

permanent link continue reading »


The ESA Project

Written on 10/21 at 10:28 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: brown

I want to discuss my semestre-long graduate seminar project. Several weeks ago our class of nine divided into three groups of three, each assigned to a different project related to the broad theme of carbon neutrality. I was assigned to the Ecological Society of America (ESA) group. Our job is to look at the carbon emissions resulting from the ESA's yearly operations, find ways to reduce those emissions and then suggest methods of offsetting the rest. We already know that the primary source of carbon emissions is the group's annual conference, held in early August, to which about 4,000 people fly, drive or take the train.

permanent link continue reading »


Why Build Green?

Written on 09/30 at 10:31 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: brown

I wrote this essay for my Sustainable Design in the Built Environment Class. In it, I pretend to be an architect writing a letter to a potential client, explaining to him how green building works and why he or she should choose me, a green architectA letter to John Mench Schnook"Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape.

permanent link continue reading »


Lessons From the Past: Moving into the 22nd Century

Written on 09/26 at 10:31 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: brown

The following is a speech given to the United Nations by Andy Posner, the world-renowned environmental activist, on January 20th, 2035. The IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change) has just released its eighth climate assessment report, in which it is stated that, thanks to the re-working of the second-phase of the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 2012, worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases have stabilized at 480 PPM C02e, and have indeed begun to fall.

permanent link continue reading »


Page 4 of 5 pages « First  <  2 3 4 5 >


Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!

My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…

continue reading »

A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?

Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development.  To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…

continue reading »

Tonight, the Oneness of Things

It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come.  I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…

continue reading »