Very real now. Dinner tonight was fab. What and amazing bunch of people we have brought here - including Finland's most sucessful business woman, the MD of the Eden Project, an American venture capitalist, a former adviser to Gordon Brown, a clutch of social entrepreneurs, head of corporate affairs for vast multi-national, CEO of a Danish Bank. What unites them is a passion about business and social innovation and a fascination with Yunus and Grameen.
Until recently I didn't know a whole lot about micro-finance except that it was widely seen as a Good Thing. Done some research and it is clear it is a much more contested area than I had assumed. It has its critics from the left and right and there are diverse forms on offer - from NGO's, hybrids like Grameen and a recently expanding private sector. Does it really take people out of poverty or just ease some of the symptoms? Does it really have the amazing repayment rates that are claimed? Does it in fact just encourage people who can ill afford it to take on debts? Is it right that private sector investors who bring extra capital into the market make money on the back of loan portfolios that include the poor? These are the questions that really interest me and I hope we can get answers in our meeting with Professor Yunus and his team.
My research so far doesn't amount to much more than googling and talking to a few financial commentators so I am no expert and the critics who are hostile may be raving nutters for all I know. I genuinely approach this subject with an open mind. To say the evidence is contradictory is something of an understatement. Grameen claims that millions have been lifted out of poverty by the financial services - including micro-credit - offered by them and other players like BRAC. But some I have found some critics are pretty blunt. One economics professor at Yale - Dean Karlan - doesn't mince words: "Microcredit is a not a transformational panacea that is going to lift people out of poverty. There might be little pockets and there are people who are made better off, but the average effect is weak, if not non-existent". Ouch. http://karlan.yale.edu/
Luckily for me I am MC'ing a two hour dialogue with the daddy of microfinance on Sunday morning at Grameen HQ and will get to hear his responses to such critics.
We will also discuss with Yunus his concept of the "social business" and his vision of an economic system and social capital market running in parallel to capitalism as practised today. Fantasy island or a must have part of humanity's future if poverty is to put into museums? On Tuesday we get to see up close one these social businesses in operation in Bogra (5 hours north of Dhaka), a joint venture between Grameen and Danone. Can't wait.
Anyway, to bed. Fortunately too busy to miss home too much. Certainly not missing the crap weather being endured in Blighty. And to get away from the school boy yaboo sucks blamefest that passes for political discourse in the sceptered isle is bliss. It's just as bad here no doubt but luckily - in this instance anyway - I dont speak or read bangla! Mucho love from a balmy Dhaka!
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Rob Greenland
Social Business Consulting
07905 800 710
rob@socialbusinessconsulting.co.uk
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