Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, the first and arguably largest microcredit firm in the world has won the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the use of microcredit to benefit poor entrepreneurs. This is an incredibly exciting time to be in Bangladesh, as Yunus is universally recognized as one of the great heroes of the nation. The Bangladeshi media is heralding the prize as the nation’s “biggest achievement” after gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971 and restoring democracy in 1991.

The front page of our daily newspaper

It is an even more exciting time to be working in the field of microcredit, as this recognition draws a great deal of attention to the potential for microcredit to be used as a tool for alleviating poverty, and also opens up more space for dialogue about the ways in which microcredit can most effectively work towards this goal.

Furthermore, since Yunus founded the Grameen Bank over 30 years ago, two very different approaches to microcredit have been developed, one of which is specifically patterned after Grameen’s work. In this way, the prize is a validation of our project and many of the other microcredit models which embrace Yunus’ approach. This approach recognizes credit as a human right, and strives to help the poorest of the poor. The other approach which has been pioneered by the World Bank and other major international development organizations promotes the idea that only certain people should be entitled to credit and that the poorest of the poor are not capable of generating their own development. Without Yunus’ approach, people like the women we work with would never be eligible for even the smallest of microcredit loans.

However, the model we have developed does diverge from Grameen’s own model, and seeks to build on Yunus’ experience and learn from its successes and shortcomings. One significant difference is that the Grameen Bank is specifically patterned to work with women in rural areas (“grameen” means “rural” in the local Bangla language), and our model has been specifically developed for the urban poor. While rural poverty is certainly an issue in Bangladesh as well as the rest of the developing world, urban poverty is a growing problem of very serious consequences. While Bangladesh is the most densely populated city in the world, urbanization is one of its major problems, with 25% of the population living in cities. In the past 100 years, the rural population of Bangladesh has increased by about 3 times, while the urban population has increased by about 30. The rate of migration of the rural population to urban areas is growing much faster than the capacity of the economy or Dhaka’s urban infrastructure to support them. This is demonstrated by the fact that Dhaka has one of the highest rates of death from infectious disease of any city in Asia. Furthermore, unemployment remains high in the city, at around 23%, making microcredit an important tool at helping people to create their own opportunities for development, since the formal economy is clearly not equipped to incorporate the entire population. Policy recommendations by those who study rural-urban migration consistently include measures to support entrepreneurial development and improve the productivity of the informal sector, two measures which microcredit is uniquely suited to promote. If microcredit fails to respond to the situation of the urban poor, it will have no chance of successfully battling poverty in the 21^st century.

Unfortunately the Grameen model has not been as successful in the urban areas as it has been in the rural, prompting a need for programs like ours to explore microcredit’s potential within the cities. Furthermore, throughout the country, our experience with people who use existing microcredit programs has consistently shown that while access to credit has helped them to improve cash flow and in this way even make their lives easier in some ways, it’s role in truly bringing people out of poverty is not being maximized. While microcredit is clearly a good step towards facilitating development for the world’s poor, it must be reformed if it is to fulfill its potential. On Radio Netherlands, Bangladeshi economist Rashed Titumir (also a co-worker of a good friend of ours) has commented on some of these same dynamics within microcredit. His comments can be found at the bottom of this article.

From what we can tell so far about the microcredit model we have developed, its primary contribution to the field of microcredit is its incorporation of the cooperative business component. While the Grameen Bank model gives loans to women in groups which they can then use individually to start their own businesses, our program is very different because it gives loans to groups which they then use to create group businesses. We can already tell that this model helps women to maintain control of the loan themselves (instead of allowing them to give it to their husbands – a problem which is widely recognized as a major shortcoming of all microcredit programs), and it also gives them the opportunity for a higher level of development than is possible with traditional microcredit. We will continue to explore these possibilities along with the women who work in the cooperatives we have helped to establish.

8/30: A Very Long Post About How We Are Learning a Lot

Note: pictures recently added (9/29/06).

So much has happened since our last update that it’s hard to know where to begin. While it hasn’t all been easy, we have certainly learned more in the past week and a half than we have in all the rest of our time here in Bangladesh.

On August 17^th the Nari Jibon Microcredit Project awarded its first loan to the women’s cooperative to start their business. Actually, it turned out that we gave two separate loans to two separate businesses. Although we had been working with twelve women together as a group, their business interests and skills were so different that creating two cooperatives instead of one was much more realistic.

To give these loans, we held a small ceremony and pulled out all the stops to make it seem as official as possible. There were all sorts of forms to be signed (including one form which was printed on this kind of official government legal paper which you pay about $1 for each piece, but it really makes an impact). We also decided to have every person sign every form with their name in addition to their thumb print because there are at least a couple women in the group who have a hard time signing their names, so we didn’t want anyone to stand out if they couldn’t sign their name fully (see some pictures of signing and thumprinting the certificates here). We also gave each woman a certificate acknowledging her completion of the business class taught by Women for Women. Something we have learned in our time here is that to Bangladeshi women, specifically those with little to no formal education, the physical recognition of her participation in any sort of skill-building program is extremely highly regarded. As one wise advisor said to me: “never underestimate the importance of certificates in Bangladesh.” (See a picture of Bela, one of the Cooperative members, receiving her certificate here).

The Fish and Vegetable Shop

Six of the women have a lot of experience in selling vegetables, fish, and other groceries. Some of them currently work in a small dirt-floored open-air stall which the group has decided to invest in fixing up. They want to put a roof on the shop and rebuild the walls and maybe even lay down some cement to make a real floor. They are also planning on buying a freezer to store the fish in, which would really develop their businesses into something much bigger than what they’re doing now: it would mean being able to keep fish fresh for a number of days, as opposed to what they’re doing now, where at the end of the day, any remaining stock has to be thrown out. The idea of buying a freezer for their shop would have otherwise been unthinkable for these women. See pictures here of fish businesses like the ones that the women have now.

To hear them talk about what they imagine this doing for their business is truly a poignant testament to what they can accomplish with a little help from us and a lot of help from each other.

See a picture of the Vegetable and Fish Cooperative receiving their loan here.

The Clothing Shop

The other six women are all in the clothing business, either as tailors or as vendors out of their homes of saris and salwar-kameez (both kinds of traditional clothing for Bangladeshi women). They have decided to start a tailoring shop where they will sell clothing and fabric.

Additionally, they have decided to diversify by expanding to selling cosmetics and some children’s toys (because they think women in their neighborhood would buy toys for their kids while they’re in having some clothing made for themselves). Their plan is ambitious and exciting, and is well beyond the scope of any of their businesses, or the business of any woman they know, for that matter. They’re going to need sewing machines and display cabinets to expand the business to this scale, and they have arranged with a landlord to rent a shop twice the size of any other shop that any woman in the area runs.

See a picture of the Tailoring Cooperative receiving their loan here.

Unanticipated Problems…

However, soon after the loans were awarded, the problems we were told to anticipate began to pop up.

Three of the women in the group each took a small portion of the money and spent it on personal expenses unrelated to the cooperative. While this at first seemed to us to be a major crisis, it now seems to be a very resolvable issue which will continue to be a great learning experience for everyone involved.

First of all, it seems clear that the women took the money at the urging of their husbands who wanted it for their own personal businesses. In fact, the problem came to our attention when the 3 husbands called one of our project staff complaining that they hadn’t gotten more money for themselves. When we met with the women the following day, we insisted that only the women be present at the meeting, although many of the husbands had gathered to join in.

After a great deal of discussion, the women agreed they had all made some mistakes and they wanted to figure out how to make things better.

Moving Forward

Our experience during the last week has drawn to our attention two key issues that are ignored in other microcredit programs, but which the Nari Jibon Microcredit Project is prepared to address – Mutual Accountability and the Role of Patriarchy in Microcredit Programs:

Mutual Accountability

The Nari Jibon Microcredit Project’s goal is to assist in women’s empowerment through their mutual accountability and respect. After the recent setbacks, we are clearly need more work to ensure this mutual accountability is maintained; but as you will read below, the women are already addressing this issue on their own.

The women have decided to regroup next week. Before then, they will work together to develop a more comprehensive plan for how the cooperative will operate in the future. They will also decide how profits will be shared, and the rules by which each member will participate.

They will also develop a more detailed business plan that we and they will use to monitor their progress. Then the Project Staff will work with the women to evaluate these plans and talk with them about how to ensure their implementation

The Role of Patriarchy

We have also realized that in order to challenge patriarchy in this patriarchal society, we will not succeed by simply ignoring it.

It is culturally accepted that every woman in Bangladesh has a man who is somehow responsible for her. This man is called her “guardian.” If she doesn’t have a husband, that man is her father or her brother, or even sometimes her son. When we arrived in the country, Kasia had to answer a question on the entry application which said “Name of Father or Husband.” There is no equivalent question for Anders. Based on our growing understanding of these cultural dynamics, we have decided to directly address the “elephant in the living room” of women’s empowerment work in Bangladesh: that no matter what your program aims to change, men are still ultimately in control of women’s lives.

The process of acknowledging the role of men in the empowerment of women has been very interesting for us, and we think that it will be an important element of ensuring the complete success of the project.

Even if every woman in the Nari Jibon Cooperative understood the project perfectly and the role she plays in it, if their “guardians” don’t understand and accept the role of women in the group, the cooperative will not be successful. Therefore, we need to recognize the role that their “guardians” play in their lives, because the guardians’ respect for the cooperative project is integral to its success.

So in the next week, we are going to have meetings with all of the husbands and brothers and talk to them about our goals for the project and exactly how it will operate. We will have Sujan, one of the male research staff, conducting these meetings because these conversations will only be effective if they are between men.

The Good News

In spite of the setbacks and occasional feelings of despondency, on the whole, the problems we faced during the last week have had a remarkably positive impact on us and our work. As we reflect on the implications of the problems, we realize how important these problems have been to our understanding of Bangladesh and the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model.

Learning from an Expert

It is unheard of in Bangladesh to give this much money (300,000 taka, which is about $4,285) to women who are this poor. The risk involved with giving women this much money directly is much higher than any other microcredit organization in Dhaka has been willing to undertake.

However, we have recently met Tim Steel, a British development worker here in Dhaka. Tim has retired from the corporate world into the world of social change, having spent his career working in top positions at Sony, Jaguar, and other major corporations (he also headed up the first anti-AIDS campaign in the UK).

We’ve been spending a lot of time with him and are learning a great deal from him. He adds a unique perspective to our work which involves a more business-oriented take on how development can be most successful. Although Tim doesn’t particularly care for microcredit programs in general, he is really enthusiastic about our project and says that it is exciting because the bigger the risks you take, the bigger potential you have for success. We are looking forward to continuing to work closely with Tim as an advisor and friend while we are in Dhaka.

Newfound Understanding

As for ourselves, we have developed a much more complex understanding of these women, and of all the cultural factors which are bound up with our communication with them, their relationships with each other, and all of our work in this project. This newfound (and growing) understanding of the cultural implications of the project has already proven to be a major asset to our ability to overcome the barriers to the project’s success.

We have now come to realize what a truly ambitious project this is, and what a huge thing we and the Nari Jibon Cooperative women are trying to accomplish. We are challenging everything about the limited power these women have been given all of their lives due to their gender and their economic position.

Clearly some of them might not be able to handle these changes as well as others. However, the changes we are already seeing are monumental, given what we (and they) are up against. While we were temporarily disheartened, we now realize that we are really changing things – and change takes time.

Implications for the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model

Despite the temporary setbacks, the good news is that we are learning more and more about the ways in which the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model is more capable of addressing the root causes of poverty than the prevailing microcredit models.

In most microcredit programs, although the woman is the one who takes the loan, it is customarily used by her husband, while she still retains the responsibility for repayment. With this model, the women retain control over the loan by keeping it within the cooperative. Unfortunately, the money which was mistakenly given to individual women when we initially gave the loan was predictably handed over to their husbands. This indicates that (barring diversions from the model), our model can be successful in this regard.

Furthermore, in Bangladesh microcredit programs have proliferated without substantially improving the lives of their constituents. Microcredit programs are often locally used as mechanisms to maintain cash flow, much the way Americans use credit cards for cash flow. These microcredit loans are commonly repaid with loans from other microcredit firms, creating a cycle of debt that can never really eradicate the poverty that the people of Bangladesh face.

However, the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model is different from other microcredit systems, in three important ways.

First, the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model was structured to provide women enough money and resources to amass productive assets that can truly and permanently empower them. The Nari Jibon Model is not a cash flow loan, but a means to substantively different employment and business opportunities.

Second, the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model incorporates education and technical resources for borrowers. We believe that if microcredit lenders can help the women’s cooperatives manage their own money more efficiently (through education, technical support and planning), the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model will be a major breakthrough in giving women themselves control over their financial resources.

Third, the Nari Jibon Microcredit Model requires collective action which assists individual women in a mutually supportive and accountable relationship. Without the collective, women are constantly at risk of losing their assets and their power.

8/7: Exhausted, but Exhilarated

Since we last wrote a proper project update, we have made amazing progress. We have had a number of exciting developments, after each of which we say, exhilarated, “let’s write an update about this!” Unfortunately, the nature of these developments is that they have taken up so much of our time and energy that we haven’t had much time for anything else, including writing updates. A few days ago we both caught this horrible viral flu that has been going around Dhaka and we’ve been home sick ever since then, giving us time to write an update and to realize that even with all the work we’ve got, we really need to start giving ourselves some weekends.

Local NGO Women for Women will Teach our Business Classes!

First of all, since about a week after arriving, we had been hugely stressed out trying to figure out how to get a curriculum together for the women’s business class. Upon our arrival in Bangladesh, we found out that the existing business class at Nari Jibon which we intended to enroll the participants in our program in was impractical for their needs. Unfortunately, it was clear to us from the beginning that we are wholly unequipped to teach a business class to women entrepreneurs of the slums of Dhaka, but there wasn’t anyone else around who was either. While we were searching for some direction in this mess, we came across a curriculum developed by Women for Women, a local NGO which, founded in 1973, is one of the mainstays of the Dhaka feminist community. You can read more about them here. A few years ago, with funding from JICA, the Japanese equivalent of USAID (the American international aid organization), they put together a business class which was exactly what we were looking for. It was geared toward women with an entrepreneurial spirit, exactly the kind of group we’re dealing with. In the summary of their project, they said that the primary obstacle for the women they were working with was that they didn’t have any sources of capital to start their new businesses, and it was clear that not only did we need a project like theirs, but they also needed a project like ours!

So, we decided to call up Mahmuda Islam, Executive Director of Women for Women (and a very famous Dhaka feminist scholar and activist). She graciously agreed to meet with us about getting in touch with the class’ original teachers and perhaps getting a hold of the content of their classes. During our meeting, she went even farther by offering to have the original teachers of the Women for Women business class teach our students the same class themselves. So, despite some stress in the beginning, things worked out better than we ever could have hoped for! It doesn’t get much better than this. See pictures of the business class here.

We had originally planned to have the classes stretch over about a month and a half, but the women in the group asked us to expedite the process. Because of their goal to get the business up and running before Ramadan, we decided to hold the class over a period of 2 weeks. The Women for Women trainers agreed to this and now the classes are in full swing. We are particularly looking forward to having the help of Women for Women in evaluating the progress of our group and their business plan. The project is really lucky to have this partnership, and we think that we will be a great deal more successful because of it.

Another Visit to East Rampura

We are starting to make semi-regular visits to East Rampura, to visit the women we’re working with. This time they wanted to show us their homes, which was a really incredibly experience. Slums in Dhaka are all pretty much the same: there might be one larger house or apartment, and then a number of “houses” surrounding that, which consist of one small room which houses an entire family. The nicer ones have cement walls and floors and cost around $50/month for rent. The others are more like what you might expect in a rural area (we have been surprised to find houses like these in the middle of the city), with dirt floors and walls made of corrugated tin and scrap wood and metal – these cost more like $15/month. Consistently, their hospitality is overwhelming and incredibly generous, so we had to insist this time that they didn’t buy us any food or drinks (people usually buy us Pepsi when we visit their houses) because otherwise our visits would turn into a major expense for them, which we don’t want. You can see some pictures of their houses here, here, here, and here.

Launching the Research Project

Also since our last update, we have laid the groundwork for a serious academic research assessment of our project. This will involve a series of in-depth interviews with the women in the group to determine the effects the project will have on their lives. To do this, we have hired a field worker, Bina, who has a lot of experience with this kind of research, and who worked with Kathy Ward on her earlier research on women in Dhaka. We already are very impressed with her work, and we trust her a great deal. Bina can ask the women questions that we can’t necessarily ask them, like about their incomes and their relationships with their husbands. We’re lucky to have her working with us, as she can catch a lot of things that we might miss, due to our relative unfamiliarity with Bangladeshi culture, customs, and language. Bina takes notes on all of our field visits, as well as conducts on her own all of the in-depth interviews with the women. She just started doing the baseline interviews a few days ago, and we’re getting excited to see the results. Over the course of the next few months, she will continue to interview the women, asking similar questions, and we will see how their responses change. We have been lucky, in developing our questionnaires, to have access to a whole range of questionnaires which have been used in past studies evaluating microcredit projects, as well as other studies examining women’s empowerment and gender relations in Bangladesh. What would we do without the internet!?! Right here from our laptop, we have access to databases so extensive that it’s almost like sitting in our college libraries. These research tools will be the primary instruments in measuring the successes of our project. (See some pictures of Bina getting down to business in East Rampura here and here).

8/2: Khala's Former Garment Factory

A couple days ago, Khala took us to the garment factory where she worked for 18 years. This factory was where she met all of the women who are participating in the cooperative. The clothes we saw being made had tags for J.C. Penney. The factory owner told us that they also make a lot of clothes for Walmart.

Having half-expected to walk into the factory and find young emaciated children chained to their work stations, we were actually surprised by what seemed to be high standards for working conditions. The factory was reasonably well ventilated, there were lists of labor rights posted on the wall, and some of the employees were even using safety equipment. The real problem is with the workers’ wages, which are well below a living wage, even for Bangladeshi standards.

In 1987, when Khala started working at this garment factory, the salary of the women working there (6 days a week, 8:00am to 8:00pm with a 1-hour lunch break) was roughly $3 per month. If she worked overtime (meaning 8:00am to 10:00pm), she made $6 per month. Today the salary of the workers is much higher: the minimum wage is about $15 and with overtime they can make up to $30. Even in Bangladesh, this is not enough money to raise a family.

See some pictures of the garment factory: here, here, and here.

7/16: We're starting to make serious progress

Things are getting started a lot faster than we had planned, but things are really starting to get going and it’s all very exciting. We’ve had three focus groups to start talking to women about the project, one with a group of sex workers and one with a group of migrant workers, and one with a group of former garment workers, some of whom now have their own very small businesses. All of the women we have met with have been absolutely incredible and we are learning so much from them about their lives and Bangladeshi culture and the ways in which they struggle to support their families and themselves. The women in last group we met with have turned out to be exactly who we were looking for to participate in the project, and they are maybe even more excited than we are about working with us. All of them were brought to us by a woman who works at Nari Jibon and who we have become very close to. Her name is Ruma Begum, but everyone calls her “Khala,” which is an affectionate name meaning “Auntie” in Bangla. Khala used to work in a garment factory with these women and they have remained very close. (Here is a picture of Khala).

Khala’s personal story is really incredible. She lived in a Bangladeshi village and was married for many years until her husband died and she was left with nothing. Bangladeshi tradition says that she should have married her husband’s brother, but she didn’t want to and so she ran away and got a job at a garment factory in Dhaka. About a year and a half ago she started working at Nari Jibon, helping out around the office and keeping things in order for everyone (she also makes the best tea). When she came to Nari Jibon, she was illiterate and didn’t speak a word of English. Now she can read and write Bangla and speaks enough English to be able to communicate well with us. Khala says that she is in her 50’s, but we suspect otherwise: she was the first child of a father who is now 107. Khala shared with us the notebook she uses to practice writing English. The first page says: “My name is Ruma Begum. I worked in garments for 18 years. I was the woman who ironed the clothes. I am a strong woman.” Khala is one of the sweetest women we have ever met. She takes care of us well, and says that we are like her own children. Khala believes strongly in the cooperative business project and so she has done a lot to help us. She even gave the women who we’re working with 200 taka (the equivalent of less than 3 dollars, but for Khala probably enough to buy a month’s worth of rice) so that they could afford the rickshaw fare to come meet with us on their lunch breaks. When we found out that she did this, we of course paid her back, but it means a lot to us that she is that committed to our work here.

The twelve women who Khala brought us already have some basic business skills, which is a definite plus. Also, a factor which impressed us immediately is that they all trust and respect each other, and have some very good ideas about cooperation. They have one woman who they trust as a leader, who does a lot of the talking for them, who is very savvy—she understood what we were saying about a cooperative immediately and even described some of our fundamental ideas to us before we even had the chance to explain them ourselves.

At this point we have met with these women a few times and are already getting involved with serious some serious planning with them. We talked to them about the problems they have experienced with their work and their small businesses and what they need to improve their business skills. Upon asking “What do you need?” one woman, Hasina, who is intelligent and tough, but very sweet, said “Strength!” We were surprised to hear that they had a lot of ideas about what they need, in fact, including skills in long-term business planning, accounting, understanding how to cooperatively make decisions, and for some of them basic literacy skills.

One of the obstacles we have encountered since we arrived is that the business class currently being taught at Nari Jibon is going to need some re-vamping before it can really provide the skills these women will need to start a major cooperative business. Therefore, our first task is going to have to be to develop the business curriculum. It’s good that we’re finding it out early because now our work to develop the microcredit program will also hopefully be of great benefit to the school itself. We’ve already got some great contacts here and have been talking to people all over Dhaka about how to develop this curriculum and be sure that it can most effectively provide the women with the skills they need to run a successful cooperative. We’ve been talking to a lot of great people and it’s been good to get input from other programs so that we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel.

So we’re going to start our business classes this week, which we are excited but sort of nervous about. Basically, the women in the group work every day from 6am to 11pm, with a break between noon and 2. So we’re going to have the classes a couple times a week during their break times, which I can’t imagine giving up if I were them, given all the work they do anyway, but they are really serious about making this happen. They have a goal to have the business up and running before Ramadan (which will probably start in late September) because that’s a really good business month (like Holiday time in America). It’s ambitious, but I’m confident that we can make it happen, and their enthusiasm is really exciting.

We had an opportunity to go to the small businesses that some of the women run in a neighborhood in Dhaka called East Rampura. Khala took us and showed us around everywhere. It’s basically a slum neighborhood, and even for Dhaka it was a very different experience for us. We were overwhelmed by how welcoming they were to us and how comfortable we felt with them, hanging out in their sari shops and vegetable stalls. Check out some pictures of our visit here and here.

7/6: Greetings from Bangladesh

We jumped into our work at Nari Jibon right away, as a shortage of English teachers meant that we started teaching literally the moment we walked in the door. It feels like things have been moving non-stop ever since. We have now taken over two English classes full time, and have been helping out here and there with a few of the other classes as well. It already feels like we have become part of daily life here. The women have been so unbelievably welcoming to us, and they are eager to learn about us and our life in America. (see some pictures of our students here)

We’re already getting started on talking to people about the microcredit project and things are getting really exciting. We have met with a number of groups of women to talk about the project and get their ideas. Last week we brought in a group of female migrant workers (in Bangladesh, that means that they are people who leave the country for 6 or 7 years at a time, to places like Malaysia and Dubai to work in factories or do domestic work there). If the cooperative business project could provide them with options that are better than leaving Bangladesh for years at a time (many of them are married and have families here), then that would be really great. We have been working with Sheikh Rumana who is the head of BOMSA, an organization which serves migrant workers, and she is really excited to get returning migrant workers involved in the project. She had the great idea for the cooperative business to be a small department store, with a number of different services like tailoring, fabric sales, and other things. The exciting thing about this is that it gives women the opportunity to pursue different things they might be really excited about, or have a particular talent in. For example, one woman we met with didn’t speak any English, except she kept saying “beauty parlor” because that was something that she really wanted to do. When we said that we could have a beauty parlor inside the department store, she was so excited! It was really cool to see her enthusiasm about the project and how it could incorporate her plans and goals.

The overall impression seems to be excitement and curiosity, and we’ve been surprised to see how innovative people seem to think the idea is. We will update again soon on our progress.

Getting adjusted to life in Dhaka has been a huge project in itself – the pace of life here is different than the pace of life at home. Yesterday there was a “hartal” which is basically a general strike, and we were forced to stay inside all day. We have had less access to the internet than we might have expected, not only because of unreliable internet connections, but also because of what they call “load shedding,” which is where the power goes off for hours at a time at any time of the day or night. So that’s been interesting to get used to, but we think we’re adjusting to it all pretty well.

6/13: Project Introduction

On June 15th, we will travel to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where we will spend six months at the Nari Jibon School. Nari Jibon was founded by Dr. Kathy Ward, a sociologist, to provide classes in tailoring, English and computers to poor, underserved women in Dhaka. We will use money we have raised (and are raising-- donations will be accepted throughout the project) through the exceedingly generous support of family, friends, and many wonderful organizations to help these women to establish their own businesses through a microcredit program.

Through our academic programs, we have developed an exciting new microcredit model which responds to the large body of research which has come out of the microcredit industry in Bangladesh. The model combines a cooperative business structure with a revolving loan fund lending mechanism to create a microcredit program which will aims at self-sufficiency. This model, while it takes many components from other successful programs, has never been tested before. As such, information we will gather during our time at Nari Jibon about the efficacy of the model will be useful to other microcredit programs of its kind. The Nari Jibon microcredit program will ideally provide a replicable model for future microcredit programs in Bangladesh and other parts of the world.

Our model focuses on the potential of microcredit to empower women, not only financially, but also socially and politically. Microcredit can be most effective as a tool for poverty alleviation when combined with education, and when its ultimate objectives involve poverty alleviation rather than ensuring profits for the lenders.

For the next six months, we will update this website with stories and pictures about our experiences at Nari Jibon. We welcome you to follow along with our project on this site, and to share the link to our webpage with any friends who may be interested. We would appreciate any comments you would like to leave for us on the site or by e-mailing us directly at andersandkasia@gmail.com.