Here I am in Morocco. For three months, I’ll be working for Al Amana, the largest microfinance institution (MFI) in the country. Despite Morocco’s status as a middle-income country ($3,800 GDP per capita), its poverty rate is a shocking 19% due to the expansive rural zones where 65% of the population live on less that $2 a day. Due to the dire conditions, local NGOs began to take interest in development via microfinance the 1990s, following the lead of successful implementation of other microfinance ventures such as the Grammeen Bank in Bangladesh that pioneered microfinance in the 1970s.