Microcredit Catching On, Says 'banker to poor'
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Program #5479 of the Earth & Sky Radio Series with hosts Deborah Byrd, Joel Block,
Maria Chimuil Xicajau of Guatamala got her first loan of $183 from Grameen Guatemala to help with her production of beaded belts. After taking her first loan, Maria increased her profit margin by 33% with the reduced costs for purchasing beads in bulk. "With the additional income, I will invest in education for my children," she said. (Photo: Whole Planet Foundation)
Microcredit – loans to the poor made without collateral – is catching on in Latin America with the help of the Whole Planet Foundation, according to Nobel-prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
Muhammad Yunus: We have 7.5 million borrowers, 97 percent of them are women.
Known as the ‘banker to the poor,’ Yunus popularized the idea of microcredit in his native Bangladesh.
Muhammad Yunus: They take tiny loans and generate income-generating activities, then they pay back the loan, people get out of poverty, and the poor people own the bank. They send their children to school. And the children receive education loans so that they can continue in higher education. And thousands and thousands of young people are now in higher education out of illiterate families because a bank came and supported them.
Yunus helped organize a team of experts from Bangladesh to establish microcredit in Latin America.
Muhammad Yunus: The Whole Planet Foundation is supporting Grameen Trust to start microcredit program in Guatemala. And a beautiful program is running there. In Costa Rica, now in Assam. Now we are talking about doing it in China. They didn’t have to. The market doesn’t expect you to do that. But this is beyond the textbook.
Yunus spoke of the need to ‘step outside the textbook.’
Muhammad Yunus: They needed to step outside the textbook to bring out their own feelings, their own urges. Now we are saying, why don’t we put that in a theoretical framework? We should be feeling proud of what we are doing. We shouldn’t be feeling shy, that oh, we are not going according to the book. The book is wrong. We are not wrong. Human beings cannot be wrong. The book didn’t depict us right. So, we need to do that. That’s what the social business idea is all about.
This work has supported almost 15,000 microentrepreneurs in Latin America alone. For more on the Whole Planet Foundation, click here.
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Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus
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Muhammad Yunus – ‘banker to poor’ – is hopeful
Our thanks to:
Muhammad Yunus
Founder and Managing Director
Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank Bhavan
Bangladesh
Written by Jorge Salazar, Deborah Byrd
Direct link: http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/52310/microcredit-catching-on-says-banker-to-poor
