Educational Media Reviews Online

Karen Zider’s compact, atmospherically rich and affirmative documentary about how the availability of micro credit to low-income people can positively transform lives by fostering self-determination and tangible improvement in quality of life concentrates on three Columbian women who have become successful entrepreneurs with the help of loans from Fundación WWB, the Women’s World Banking affiliate in Cali, Columbia. Each of the three women vividly recounts their emergence from financial and emotional dependence on unsupportive or domineering spouses, and in so doing invite broader consideration of the formidable structural constraints – cultural, social and economic -- facing low-income women in developing countries.

As both a concrete testimony to the beneficial potential of micro credit and a vibrantly sympathetic portrait of women in a male-dominant cultural context succeeding to establish independence and financial security for themselves and their families, Moving Forward will likely bear most strongly on interests from the perspectives of women’s studies and business.