What if banks demanded more of their customers?
In 1976, Professor Muhammad Yunus and a small group of colleagues began issuing small loans of about $27 to the poverty-stricken in his local village. Over time this group became involved in a series of ventures in other sectors Æ from fisheries to Internet service providers Æ establishing the Grameen Bank which reaches millions of the world’s poor. The bank issues microloans to poor borrowers Æ particularly women. It does so on the premise that credit is a human right, and necessary to encouraging individual agency in breaking the poverty cycle. To date, Grameen Bank has lent more than $4.5 billion to small-scale entrepreneurs, and its repayment rate far exceeds that of commercial banks. Yunus’s model is now being used to break the cycle of poverty in more than fifty countries.
December 11th, 2007 13:29
This is a most interesting post. My country’s government has set the year 2030 as the year that this will become a first world country. The difficulty with this of course is how to move the level of per capita income to one that will sustain the title.
This bank seems to have the right idea. Love it!
Anthony
http://www.prosperityinmotion.net