It’s awards season in the film industry and companies with an eye to a bit of free publicity will be offering gifts to the actors, executives and celebrities attending the ceremonies. If you think a goody bag is something with a balloon, a party popper and a lolly at the end of an afternoon of cake and musical statues, look away now. Nominees at the Oscars 2013 received swag worth $45,000.

It sometimes seems that the richer and more successful you become, the more free stuff you get.  In other words, the more you can afford, the less you need to spend. Unfortunately, this isn’t just true at parties. Unfairness stalks the globe in much more serious ways.

In other places than Hollywood, other worlds, if you have to spend what you make from selling what you grow in order to eat, you can’t plant for next year unless you borrow at a punitive rate of interest from the man who just bought your crop.

Unpicking the knots of this sort of injustice and unfairness is complicated.  Governments spend billions on aid, while many economists argue that it entrenches poverty and that trade and economic engagement are what’s needed. Because the biggest obstacle preventing people escaping from poverty is not lack of access to large amounts of money but to very small sums: enough to buy a cow, or a second-hand sewing machine to start making and repairing clothes.  Enough to buy seed for next year’s crop.

The microfinance movement, inspired by people like Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh, whose organization, the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, works on the principle that small amounts of money can make an enormous difference in people’s lives.  Microfinance bodies offer low-interest loans, the majority of them to women, who have traditionally had no access to money but who have nonetheless often shouldered the burden of making a living for their families. The sums might be as little as fifty pounds, or as much as a few thousand, enabling them to set up businesses, expand their smallholding or buy livestock. The capital comes from small investors, who almost invariably get their money back, such is the strength of will on the part of the borrowers to make the money work.

Microfinance lending is transforming lives all over the world, including the UK.  It has not been without its problems, but look it up and see what’s happening.  And when you do, you might find yourself worrying less about who gets what at the Oscars.

I learned about microfinance initiatives from my friend Mark, former Chair of Fair Finance in East London, which was founded and continues to be led by Faisel Rahman, who set up the company after working with Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank.

The picture is a detail of a nineteenth century steelyard balance in the Museo delle Bilance at Monterchi in Tuscany. The balance beam to the left of the pivot is marked with the stamps from each time it was tested for accuracy.