Brett Hudson Matthews

Brett Hudson Matthews is dedicated to lighting the path out of poverty for the poorest billion rural citizens of our planet.

In 2012, following a fellowship at the McLuhan Program for Culture and Technology (University of Toronto), Brett launched My Oral Village, Inc. At Mathwood Consulting Company, a consulting firm he founded, Brett has conducted many evaluations of village finance projects, working in 15 of the world’s poorest countries since 2000. He was Gates Advisor at MicroSave India during 2008-09, where he advised over a dozen MFIs in 12 Indian states.

With the Canadian Co-operative Association, Brett led the development of the Cambodian Community Finance Network (CCFiN) from 2003-07, preparing the way for the emergence of a national credit union movement in that country.

In the 1990s Brett worked at Metro (now Alterna) Credit Union in Toronto, and served on the credit committee of the Calmeadow Metro Fund, a microcredit fund operating in Toronto.

Brett writes and edits a blog for village finance practitioners (www.villagefinance.net), and has published numerous papers on microfinance. He earned his MBA (finance) from the Schulich School of Business at York University and his MA (development studies) at the University of Toronto.

http://myoralvillage.org/about/management/

By Brett Hudson Matthews

Blog

Financial Innumeracy: A Global Problem for Digital Finance?

Mounting evidence suggests financial innumeracy presents a bigger barrier to financial inclusion than is often acknowledged. Here are three ways to improve numeracy.
Blog

Cash: The Unsung Hero of Digital Finance

Far from being a fossilized legacy in the digital era, cash is arguably a potent tool that can help bring poor people into financial inclusion. Here’s why.
Blog

A Multi-Digit Divide? Building Basic Financial Numeracy

The behavior and practices of "oral communities" - where most people are illiterate - may help to explain both the scale of account dormancy in mobile money and the prevalence of over-the-counter (OTC) mobile money services.