By Richard McKeever
I attended an inspiring presentation by Founder of the Grameen Bank and 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammed Yunus at the LSE on Friday. His clear message, and very straightforward presentation was well received - I was also struck by how entertaining and humorous he was. He told the well-known, yet compelling story of the Grameen Bank microcredit system - small loans without collateral and no interest repayments – and how the approach had begun to tackle generational poverty amongst their borrowers.
In his stories of individual borrowers, what came through very clearly was the holistic nature of the Grameen approach. A relationship is built with a whole family not just the borrower – in fact one measure of the success of a branch is the requirement of every child, of each borrower to be in full-time education before the branch can obtain one of the five stars in their rating system. Similarly Health Insurance at a very low rate of $1.50 per year is extended to cover a whole family, not just to borrowers.
In one section he referred to people living in poverty as “Bonsai People” whose development and growth has been affected – not through any failings of the individual – but simply because external conditions have limited their ability to reach their full potential.
In his book Banker to the Poor he explains his “Ground Up” approach:
I wanted to teach my university students how to understand the life of one single poor person. When you hold the world in your palm and inspect it only from a bird’s eye view, you tend to become arrogant – you do not realize that things get blurred when you see from an enormous distance. I opted instead for “the worm’s eye view.” -Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor.
A thought provoking and inspiring evening, which has been made available as a Podcast from the LSE: mp3 (20 mb; approx 88 minutes).
