Written by Fehmida Malik
on Wednesday, 13 January 2010
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I want to bring you the advent of Grameen into the American landscape. Please check out the Time article - Can Microfinance Make It in America? - for more details.
Grameen America has started working in our cities such as Manhattan, Brooklyn and Omaha. The target demographic is the unbankable, a medley population of immigrants and women, living on subsistence level.
Grameen’s goal in the U.S is same as it is worldwide – to get poor entrepreneurs grow from a subsistence living to a livelihood.
The concept of microfinance is nothing new in America. As a student, I got my first credit offer reaching $3,000 in limit. Since then, I received options of using 0% credit for the next six months.
Who is unbankable in America anyway? At one time, banks were issuing credits to anyone and everyone! So, why is it that microfinancing wasn’t an American Dream that got sold to the world, but the other way around, it having to come to the U.S.?
What do we do with our microfinancing opportunity is the crux of the matter. Most all cases, microfinancing is issued as a consumer good. And we as consumers burn up our credit in perishable items.
That is why, not microfinancing, but what it is being used for by Grameen matters to us in America.
- Grameen America approaches those who have proven their entrepreneurship by selling for instance, food and trinkets in street corners. How can this unbankable entrepreneur be rewarded for his/her initiative? The answer lies in microcredit.
Remember to set aside a portion of the revenue to pay off debt!! Grameen America has a solution to this dilemma as well. It’s called peer-pressure.
- Microcredit is given to individual entrepreneurs in a group-lending setting. And the ability or the lack of it of one in the group to re-pay the loan on time affects the further lending capability of his/her peers.
But the bedrock of lending for Grameen America is its genuine interest in sustaining these entrepreneurs through education, ideas and support that relies on team building and networking groups.
Enfranchising the disenfranchised is also a piece of Americana.
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