Hillary Clinton Voices Her Support of Grameen America's Efforts
Written by Alice Geglio
on Thursday, 07 January 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her support for Grameen America on January 6, 2010, citing our work in New York City as a "breakthrough idea that transforms lives and reshapes our thinking." She spoke at the Center for Global Development in Washington D.C., expressing the importance of new innovations to meet the challenges faced by today's poor.
Grameen on Three Continents – Portraits of Dignity and Determination: A Collection of Photos
Written by Greg Eberl
on Monday, 28 September 2009
Last summer, photographer Gabriel Cooney mounted an exhibit of photos that he took of Grameen activities. Greg Eberl visited the exhibit and describes it below:
The exhibited photos were taken in 2007 in Quito, Ecuador covering
Grameen Bank for Wild River Review, an international reporting and arts website,
then in 2008 in New York for Grameen America, then in Bangledesh for Grameen
Bank. Grameen Bank is the creation of Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize (2006) winning economist,
Muhammad Yunus, who took his education, ideas, and skills back to his native
Bangladesh, providing a banking formula to provide a living and perhaps
prosperity for the people. Grameen Bank microfinance is a proven idea and
methodology to provide small, individual, sustainable investment in personal
business enterprises with very successful repayment strategies. The idea and
methods have spread regionally and worldwide to other organizations.
Written by Jenene Allison and Malorye Allison
on Thursday, 30 July 2009
“It takes a village” is not a platitude when it comes to alleviating poverty—it’s an action plan. Grameen means “village” or “rural” in Bengla: The microlender by that name, Grameen Bank , was founded by Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus in Bangladesh in 1983 and is based on the type of relationships people in small villages develop over time.
Just like at a typical bank, money changes hands, loans are made and repaid, and interest is charged. The actual money and the supporting documents, however, are not exchanged anonymously through a financial institution’s post office box. They are passed from hand to hand.
Whether based in Kosovo, Zambia, or New York City, a Grameen banker goes into the community to connect with a prospective lender. The banker isn’t looking for someone with a good credit history or collateral, but rather someone living in poverty who could use a small loan to start or expand a business.
A unique and important feature of Grameen banks is that to become a borrower, you need to find four friends or acquaintances in your community who are also interested in getting loans. Every prospective borrower participates in a week-long training before they are eligible for a loan. The training session weeds out those who are not determined or sincere. At the end of the training, each group decides who among them will receive the first loan. That borrower must start repaying their loan before the next member of the group can receive one.
As the businesses grow and the loans are repaid, the borrowers become eligible for larger loans. Meanwhile, the bankers and each group of 5 continue to meet regularly and grow to know each other better.
This is how millions of businesses have been born in some of the world’s poorest regions. Some Grameen borrowers sell access to cell phones, make baskets, or offer services needed in their communities.
These close ties between bankers and borrowers may explain why even in an era of ‘toxic’ debt, the “bank for the poor” boasts a 95% loan repayment rate. Most recently, Grameen America has launched a branch in Queens, New York, and one in Omaha, Nebraska, with plans underway for another branch in Boston, Massachusetts. The activities that these Grameen America borrowers pursue are different from those borrowers in other parts of the world, and the size of the loans is usually larger in the U.S., but the relationships are built the same way.
Microfinance Makes “Top Innovations” List
Written by Malorye Branca
on Monday, 09 March 2009
Microfinance was selected as one of the top 30 innovations of the last 30 years, according to judges at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania. The list was compiled in celebration of the 30th year of PBS’s Nightly Business Report television show. The show’s viewers were invited to create the preliminary list by suggesting advances they admired most during the 1979 to 2009 time frame. Professors at The Wharton School then selected and ranked the top thirty winners last month.
Coming 17th on the list, microfinance “became a movement in the 1980's… when economist Muhammad Yunus founded his Grameen Bank and started making very small loans to the poor in Bangladesh,” according to the program’s description. The listing also mentions that “Yunus and Grameen were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.”
Other innovations in the top 30 list included the World Wide Web (#1), email (#4), social networking (#20), biofuels (#25), and ATM machines (#27).
See a slide show featuring all 30 innovations.
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