Economic development through savings and credit groups w/ World Neighbors CEO Kate Schecter - EP140

Economics Explored

Kate Schecter leads World Neighbors, an international NGO helping poor communities in developing economies lift their living standards through local savings and credit groups among other measures. Hear Kate describe how these local savings and credit groups differ from Grameen-style microfinance. Also hear Kate describe how on-the-ground, practical measures can give people a hand up, not a hand out.

About this episode’s guest - Kate Schecter, Ph.D.

Kate Schecter, Ph.D., joined World Neighbors as President and CEO in June, 2014. In her previous position, she worked for the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) for 14 years. As a Senior Program Officer at AIHA, she had responsibility for managing health partnerships throughout Eurasia and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). She also managed a blood safety program in Ukraine, Central Asia and Cambodia from 2012- 2014. In the early 2000’s she managed a program on the prevention of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in Ukraine and numerous pilot sites in Russia and Central Asia.

Through her work with over 35 partnerships addressing primary healthcare, chronic disease management, hospital management, maternal/child health, Tuberculosis, blood safety and HIV/AIDS, she has extensive experience successfully implementing AIHA’s health partnership model.

Before joining AIHA, Dr. Schecter worked as a consultant for the World Bank for three years (1997-2000), specializing in healthcare reform and child welfare issues in Eurasia and CEE. She taught political science at Tel Aviv University in Israel for a year (1992) and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for four years (1993-1997).

She has written extensively about the Soviet socialized healthcare system and was a principal investigator for the Carnegie Corporation’s Russia Initiative where she researched the issue of social cohesion in Russia. She is the co-editor and co-author of Social Capital and Social Cohesion in Post-Soviet Russia (M.E. Sharpe, 2003), author of a chapter in Russia’s Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare in Post-Communist Russia (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), and an entry on Chernobyl for Scribner’s Encyclopedia of Europe 1914-2004, (2006). She also has made three documentary films for PBS about the Former Soviet Union. Dr. Schecter holds a Ph.D in political science from Columbia University in New York and an M.A. in Soviet studies from Harvard University.

Links relevant to the conversation

A New Paradigm for Microfinance: Savings and Credit

COVID-19 and the Global Food Supply: Big Lessons from the World's Small Farms

Videos - World Neighbors

Thanks to the show’s audio engineer Josh Crotts for his assistance in producing the episode.

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