Bhagwan Chowdhry -- full-time UCLA Anderson finance professor, co-founder of Financial Access at Birth, part-time actor -- recently spoke at the PopTech conference, presenting his visvion of FAB. PopTech is, according to their website, is "a global community a global community of innovators, working together to expand the edge of change."
For those unfamiliar, FAB proposes to start every child born in the work off with a 100 dollar savings account and a unique, universal ID. We live in a world where billions of people have no access to banks, no access to credit, no access to the financial institutions many of us take for granted and FAB aims to grant that access. There are ancillary benefits as well: having a universal ID means someone exists, that there is a record of them. This gives aid-giving organizations with funds, with food, with medicine a way to access the now-unidentifiable and provide them with aid that is already available.
I highly recommend readers take the time to view Professor Chowdhry's presentation. It's inspiring both for its goals and for presenting those goals in a fashion that makes it clear that they are achievable.
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