The Social Business

Where there are young people, there is hope

It's hard to feel hopeful today.  World leaders managed to not reach a really "meaningful" agreement yesterday, and as Polly Toynbee points out here (in case you were looking to pass the buck to the politicians), it's not as if we're all full square behind those who are trying to get commitments to saving the world from environmental catastrophe.

Yet there is hope, there has to be, although I can't see it today. Personally I think it'll take a real, in your face crisis to get us all to act, and by then it'll probably be too late.  A mass migration, a bloody war caused by climate-related hunger.  Sadly we really aren't very good at thinking long-term - and 2050 is just too far away for most people.  

I'm better at thinking long-term, but not that much better.  I was in B and Q in November and the bags of grit were staring at me, shouting in their loudest voice "Buy me!  We know it's sunny today but next month it'll be snowing, and you'll end up sprinkling Maldon Sea Salt on your path."  But it was sunny that day, and I couldn't envisage my icy path, even though it was bound to come.  

But there is hope, and personally I think it lies with young people.  The ones who'll really suffer from the effects of climate change.  Please watch this video - from the Rio Conference in 1992 - but as relevant today as it was back then.  They won't get us out of this mess on their own.  But they're probably the ones who'll lead the movement.  

A social entrepreneur's dozen

It's that time of year again, when I look back at the blog over the last twelve months to see which posts were the most popular.  Here are my social entrepreneur's dozen for 2009:

1. Nudge nudge, bag bag:  I wish I'd come up with a less ugly title for what was to turn out to be the year's most popular post (and the first one to ever earn me any money).  This post, about an impressive reduction in plastic bag use by supermarket customers, won the first Bloggers Circle prize, along with the following praise from RSA Chief Matthew Taylor:  "This, I know, is how blog posting should be."
   
2. Benefit Busters:  A post inspired (?) by a Channel 4 programme looking at different Government sponsored schemes to get people off benefits and into work.  Don't think it's really worthy of second place, but it shows that if you write about topical issues, you tend to get more readers.  
   
3. News from Somewhere:  Again, a post which was popular because it dealt with a topical issue - a strike by journalists on the Yorkshire Evening Post.  My suggestion that a reason for declining sales may be a caricature-based approach to local news reporting didn't go down too well with local NUJ members, who weren't slow to tell me as much in the comments.  In the end we agreed to differ - although the debate did help me to understand the issues the journalists are facing.
   
4. Social Enterprise and The Brand Gap:  This post looked at the Social Enterprise Coalition's plans to get behind the Social Enterprise Mark.  I'm a bit sceptical about the Mark, and said as much here  - but not all the people who commented agreed.
   
5. Cadburys, Dairy Milk and Fairtrade:  Again, a topical issue, and one which I've come back to often over the last few months.  Is it a good thing that the Fairtrade Mark is given to products from companies such as Cadbury and Nestle?  It was interesting on this post to read the comments from Divine Chocolate, whose chocolate goes head-to-head with Dairy Milk in many a newsagent.
   
6. What does the SE100 Index tell us about social enterprise?  This post generated a good number of comments, after I questioned what value there was in comparing percentage growth statistics of a group of leading social enterprises and leading private businesses.  Once again, the really interesting stuff is in the comments.  
   
7. It was 10 years ago today.  This post was written on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the fairtrade shop where I cut my socially enterprising teeth.  I explore how that experience - growing a business and closing a business - has informed my thinking on social business to this day.  In particular, it's given me a realistic (at least I think it's realistic) perspective on the limits of social enterprise - and the fact that it can all go wrong.  There were some great comments on this one too.
   
8. The benefits of organic food production.  This was one of the first posts which featured a video interview - in this case with Kate Edwards, the Organic Apprentice at Swillington Farm.  Again, it was a response to a news item about FSA research which questioned the nutritional benefits of organic food production.  Just look how sunny and warm it looks....
   
9. What hope have we got for sustainability now?  This post unpicked one of the most used words in our sector - sustainability.  As public finances worsen, and the recession bites, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain many businesses, not just social businesses.  This post called for a bit more realism about what is possible when it comes to growing your own income.  
   
10. The third sector -  guilty of believing its own hype?  This post was originally a letter to New Start magazine - a response to what I thought was a slightly over-the-top assessment of the uniqueness of the third sector by a couple of umbrella body leaders.  Robin Bogg would be proud of me.  
    
11. What do you do when the table collapses?  I wrote this piece originally for a Social Business supplement in the Guardian (there's a pdf of the supplement on the blog).  It was a short piece wondering how social businesses may fare in a tightening economy - understandably a theme I came back to a few times during the year.  It attracted some good comments - including some good analysis of issues around social enterprise and the NHS - who had sponsored the supplement.  
    
12. Black, The Coalition, Voice and the future:  I wrote this post around the time that a couple of the Social Enterprise Ambassadors had been "removed" from the programme as they no longer ran what are considered to be social enterprises.  Needless to say any post that challenges the position of the Social Enterprise Coalition tends to get a fair few comments.  

A few other stats which you may or may not find interesting.  Readers are up 75% on this time last year - Twitter has helped a lot there.  Social Business is by far the most popular search term which leads people to the blog.  Six out of ten readers are from the UK (half of them are in London), whilst 15% are from the United States.  

For me it's interesting to compare this year's list with my top 10 from 2008.  I think a number of the 2008 posts reflect a weariness I felt about state-sponsored social enterprise in the UK.  I haven't lost that scepticism, but this year I've tried to make that scepticism a bit more constructive.  I think the increase in readers has helped there too - the debate has been moved on by plenty more comments this year.

All in all, writing the blog is one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done.  It helps me to organise my thoughts, hear other people's ideas, make new contacts, and, of course, get better known.  I'm not quite sure what I'd do without it now....

Some final thoughts from Bangladesh

Here are some final thoughts from Liam, before he begins his journey home from Bangladesh.

All alone in the hotel restaurant. Feels very weird after being so close to 22 people for the last week. All our Inside Grameen Delegates are speeding away from me at 30,000 feet to the four corners. 

Left behind to work on the film about social business.  I’ve spent the day crouched in front of monitors, in sound studios, listening to music which might work on the film, making lists of the people we must thank. Would love to go home but this has to be done. So much excellent footage. Interview with Yunus (who yesterday was speaking to the Indian parliament about his social business vision). So many shots of the gorgeous lush countryside and the horrible mess that is Dhaka. Interviews with the Grameen ladies in the villages, bank staff, yoghurt makers, French MBA’s working in Bogra, eye doctors,  rickshaw drivers, beggars, wide eyed kids, quite stunningly beautiful women. How we are going to get it down to ten minutes or so is a problem I have left with the talent at Drik. They are up all night to get me a good rough cut tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing that.

Wrap up session with the delegates was fab. I wont bore you with the litany of praise we got for taking the risk of putting this event on. I was very touched by people’s passion and honesty and the commitments they made about what they will now do as result of all we’ve seen. Again I am struck by the power of bringing together people from different sectors to share an experience and learn through it together.

In no particular order here are my round up thoughts:

1. Social Enterprise in the UK needs a great big kick up the arse. The obsession with what the government or the Eton Rifles think or want is farcical. Here in a place where there is no effective state, people like the Grameen folk must learn not to become dependent  on anyone for anything.  I just don’t trust free money Yunus told me.  I will probably punch the first whinging social enterprise type I run into back home who starts complaining about cuts. Just build a fucking business that can make money and help people. If you can’t do that go and work for the council or a bloody RDA. 
2. Big scale change must involve private sector business and multi nationals. The haphazard incremental growth of local social enterprises is nice but marginal. The world needs social innovation that can get to a big scale quickly. It does not need more cafes for disabled people or pretend work schemes for unemployed people which fall apart when the grant money dries up. The winners of the recent social enterprise awards are great little organisations but if I’m honest did I see any real social innovation – ideas that could change things big time? No I didn’t.  The social enterprise sector must open itself to the world of business or it will be increasingly marginal and stagnate forever going round and round the petty debates about definitions, who is and who isn’t, and kissing the bum of whoever sits at the top of the Cabinet Office.
3. Social innovation is messy, chaotic and not linear. Get in there. Learn by doing it. Yunus has semi divine status. But he is just a man (albeit a pretty extraordinary one) and has made numerous mistakes in his time. But get the right partners, each do what you do well, stay focussed on the core purpose at all times and amazing things can be achieved even in places as messed up and chaotic as Bangladesh.

This is my third visit to Bangladesh this year. I’ve fallen in love with it. I have met so many lovely people and there is here – in the rural areas at least – a sense of social solidarity which we have lost. And a society that gave birth to Grameen and BRAC must have a lot right with it.

But the place scares me too. It is an entire society living on the edge of a precipice. Rural poor people  can be wiped out by a cyclone or bad harvest (and they are all in the fields now hand picking a good crop). Slum dwellers live hand to mouth every day. And horrible Dhaka slides over the cliff under the sheer weight of numbers and a political elite who don’t give a monkey’s .

The roads are a handy metaphor for this place. Huge numbers of people trying to get somewhere in a chaotic reckless mass. Death or serious injury close to you all the time and no-one to help you if you crash. 

But let me end on an up note. A regional manager at a Grameen branch gave a farewell speech to me in very halting English. It was one of the most moving things I’ve heard for some time. He spoke about the need for global solidarity and the joining of hands of all those who want to be on the side of the poor. He spoke about the stupidity of racism and that so much more binds the people of the world than divides them.

So, in the spirit of global solidarity, much love to anyone who is reading this and good bye from the land of the Bangla speakers.

Liamxxx

Grameen - The Dignity Engine

The experience is nearly over.  Here's Liam's latest post from Bangladesh.

Back in the bus. Big crash had blocked main road to Dhaka so we take side road. Mistake. We get stuck in the middle of a gridlocked village surrounded by people. Sham – our Grameen guide – jumps out and disappears into the melee. Feels like our dad has gone. Half an hour passes. Nothing. And then trucks start reversing, cars are pulling off the road. And there’s our Sham directing the traffic, shouting at the crowds to stay back! He gets back in the bus to huge applause, whistles and cheering. He asks if we want to stop at the Grameen branch up the road for tea and a toilet break (in this country not an offer to be sniffed at!). Suddenly we are moving and soon we are back on the main road happy to be taking our chances again in the murderously reckless traffic thundering towards the capital.

Sham tells me later that when he was a boy scout he did a module on unblocking traffic jams. All I did as a scout was smoke Rothmans and try and get off with the guides. 

So, only a few hours to go and people will start dispersing. We had another jaw droppingly inspirational day in and around Bogra yesterday hosted by Isabelle and her team from Danone Communities. This social  business partnership with Grameen manufactures and distributes a high nutrition yoghurt (called Shokti Doi) to poor kids. We saw the factory, met the ladies who sell door to door, sat in on a village education session to about 200 hundred villagers gaping and laughing at the man dressed as the Shokti Doi lion. Genius. At the end of the day we had three hours with the Grameen Danone team during which the group all gave them one piece of advice, support, insight about how they could make the business better.

The business is not perfect, it is not in profit yet and they are still too reliant on the brains and resources of Paris. But what is so impressive about Danone is that they learn by doing. They haven’t waited for the perfect business plan. They know social business innovation is messy and not linear. They know the outcome they want but are happy to travel with an incomplete map. And talk about generosity of spirit and transparency. Marie used a great phrase last night when Miriam from Unilever remarked how open and honest they were being. “ We want to be known, understood and copied”, she said. They also have a line in their budget called Shit Happens – making provision for the inevitable wrong turns, unexpected bumps in the road and cock ups.

Went to bed with my head buzzing.

This morning we had a quick trip to the Grameen Eye Hospital. Built two years ago this two floor highly professional facility has treated 82,000 people and has a success rate about what the World Health Organisation average. It uses a cross subsidy model – those who can pay are charged a bit more to enable the poor access. Seeing an elderly village lady being led tenderly into the operating theatre to get her cataracts removed was very moving for us all.

And again the unbelievable go-the-extra-mile hospitality and openness. Returning to the f-you culture of London will be a stretch.

I’m weary, sleep deprived and so wishing this bus trip was over. But I am also full of admiration for this bloody amazing Grameen organism. Paul of IDEO said they’re not a business they are a dignity engine. It ain't perfect. It feels a bit rickety in places as well as state of the art in others. It is over reliant on the founder Yunus. It won’t solve poverty in Bangladesh. BUT its network of various businesses are living symbols of what it looks like to put the poor first and not last. To not just talk about practical solutions but to make them and keep making them.  

Who does fairtrade work for most?

I really need fairtrade to work.  There are times that it feels like I need it more than coffee farmers or tea plantation workers.

I know that sounds ridiculous, and it clearly is ridiculous.  But my point is that a belief in what fairtrade means forms an important part of my vision of the world, and my daily struggle to try to make sense of an obscenely unjust society.

I do what I can to make things better, bit by bit, day by day.  I do that by working with social entrepreneurs.  By writing about social business.  And by drinking fairtrade tea, and eating fairtrade chocolate.  Every little helps, I tell myself.

And I more or less handed over my life to fairtrade for seven years, working at a fairtrade shop in Leeds.  That's where I learnt most of what I know about social business.   We went from small basement premises to the high street, doubling our turnover and introducing loads of people in Leeds to fairtrade.  But eventually, we closed, unable to make the sums add up.  

Every year we hosted a fairtrade producer during Fairtrade Fortnight - cocoa farmers from Ghana and Belize, tea plantation workers from Tanzania.  The questions changed as the fairtrade sector expanded.  In the early days the question was "Should I buy my Cafedirect from the supermarket or from Trade for Change?"  In later years the question became "Should I buy Traidcraft's [fairtrade product of choice] or the [Pick Your Own Big Multinational's] equivalent product?  The debate would develop, and would inevitably focus on whether we should spend our money with the big multinational, and whether they should have the Fairtrade Mark in the first place.

Generally, the producers were pretty bemused by these arguments.  Their message was consistent and clear - just sell more of our stuff.  If a big multinational was to approach them with an offer to buy tonnes more of their cocoa on fairtrade terms, then there will only be one answer.  And it's an answer that we'd no doubt give ourselves if we were in the same position.

Lots of people aren't happy about the Fairtrade Foundation's decision to award Nestle the Fairtrade Mark for Kit Kats (the four finger ones, and only in the UK and Ireland).  Lots of the concern centres on Nestle as a business -  and understandably so - they're probably the most boycotted business in the world.  You can read an excellent argument against the decision here.

I'll be honest, I don't like Nestle.  Nor am I a natural supporter of big multinational companies.  But I don't believe that monday was a black day for fairtrade, as Joe puts it in the piece I've linked to above.  I think the Fairtrade Foundation have done the right thing.  As uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I think it's progress if Nestle start buying fairtrade cocoa and sugar for four finger Kit Kats.  Only time will tell whether this turns out to be the beginning or the end of their commitment to fairtrade cocoa.  I accept that their history with their Partners Blend coffee suggests that we shouldn't hold our breath.

But fundamentally I believe that one of the great successes of the fairtrade movement is that it has engaged big businesses, helping some of them, some of the time, to trade in a a more just way.  And I think it gives us opportunities to point out just how ridiculous it is that companies like Nestle continue to buy the majority of their cocoa on non-fairtrade terms.  So for me it's progress, uncomfortable progress, but definitely progress.  

Meet the Grameen Borrowers

Here's Liam's latest post from the back of a bus in Bangladesh.

I’m in the back of a minibus hurtling along the road to Bogra. Beside me our film director Sumeru. Film equipment is piled around me. Outside people teem in their thousands. Lorries loaded to tipping point belch out diesel smoke. Buses full (and I mean full) of people hammer along, horns blowing, lights flashing, overtaking and missing other ancient radically unroadworthy vehicles by inches. I ask Sumeru if the government’s attempts to bring some sort of order to the country’s roads will have any effect. He smiles. No, for Bangladeshis, bad driving is a genetic disorder. If there’s one thing that might make me start praying again to a supernatural intervener it’s the Bogra to Dhaka road!

I went to a village called Rajenbrapur this morning to meet Grameen borrowers. It's the Hindu festival Rasyatra. The place is bedecked in amazing colours and there are orange clad musicians who are playing for four days non-stop in praise of Vishnu. Food being cooked everywhere and people, people, people. Small kids throw flower petals over me, laughing their heads off at this white giant who towers over everyone and can’t speak bangla. 

We enter a wooden hut where are sitting about 40 women, the back bone savers and borrowers of Grameen. They tell us how Grameen credit has helped them build houses, start micro businesses, send kids to school and university. It’s quite formal as they first salute and then tell their stories to these five strangers. It starts loosening up when it comes to questions and they ask us all if we are married and have kids. I look at our gay member and wonder if he’ll talk about his partner. That might be to much intercultural sharing! 

They take a particular interest in Jessie who is not married but is young and pretty.  Bemusement as to why she in not hitched. Walking around the village and inside people's Grameen funded homes, Jessie is surrounded by women, offering her their kids to hold, having their photos taken. Great fun. We talk to three women who are Struggling Members, former beggars who have been helped up by small interest free loans. 

Later at Vawal Razabari Sreepur Branch (Gazipur Zone) - which had a 100% loan repayment last month, has 96 beggar members, 45 kids at Uni, and has funded the building of 1,639 homes - we meet eight really impressive young people who are at University on Grameen loans. One young woman is doing her masters in maths. I tell her I was rubbish at that at school. One young guy is doing English and loves Shakespeare. Reaching back to my A Levels I recite some Hamlet. "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all..."One guy is there with his mother, an illiterate borrower from the village. Right in front of us is the impact of Grameen, cascading its impact down the generations. He is asked is your mother proud of you. He says “I am proud of my mother”. 

With hugs and handshakes we say goodbye to our most excellent guides Harun and Sham and point the vehicles north to Bogra.

The other night Shahidul Alam said he was glad we had come to his country because we would see for ourselves that Bangladeshis are not the “icons of poverty,” which the western media paints them. The scale and depth of poverty is sobering no doubt about that. The infrastructure is ragged and make do. Illness and early deaths are endemic. The politics is as rotten as a three-month-old mango. But the people I saw this morning are not victims. We saw today amazingly resilient people struggling yes, but joyful and full of pride.

Grameen Bank is in the total scheme of things here pretty small beer. There are after all more than 150,000,000 people in this country. But what it stands for: equality, self reliance, solidarity, partnership is a powerful sign to a world too often jaded and cynical about the possibility of change and the power of ordinary people getting together.

Efficiency savings and failure demand

Whilst Liam is briefly away from an internet connection in Bangladesh, I'll talk for a while about matters closer to home.

With the Pre-budget report on its way this week, there's plenty of talk from politicians and commentators about how we're going to save money and get debt under control.  Good old "efficiency savings"  got another outing yesterday, with Gordon Brown pointing to at least £1.3 billion that could be saved over four years.

Is he right?  God knows.  Anyone who has any dealings with the public sector (that's all of us then) won't need telling that there are some pretty inefficient public sector services out there.  My public sector friends never tire of telling me about inefficiencies in their particular part of the sector.  So you can see why, if you're sat on top of the pile as Prime Minister, that you'd make greater efficiency a priority.

I'm interested in considering the incentives people have for being more efficient, against continuing to be inefficient.  This is where one of my favourite ideas, failure demand, comes in.  I've written about it before so won't go on, but the basic idea is that a lot of apparent demand in a system tends to come from mistakes - people not being dealt with properly first time round.

I'd encourage you to think about your recent interactions with public services.  Was any of the demand that you created actually failure demand?   Where you weren't dealt with properly straight away, so had to phone back, email again, or go to an office again?  I've got two examples in my life from the last 7 days alone.

My question is whether there is a disincentive to become more efficient in the public sector.  What will happen if you tackle failure demand, particularly at a time when the State is looking to cut costs?  You won't get rewarded - certainly not with a bonus.  They'll realise that fewer people are needed to administer your particular system, and they'll make you redundant.  So what does the rational person do?  Stick with the inefficient system, which is helping to keep you in a job. 

I know that's a rather bleak view of humanity, but I think it's a realistic view.  I also accept that inefficiency isn't just about individual decisions to "be inefficient".  But I also don't accept the argument that it's all "the system's fault", and that all public sector workers are heroic selfless individuals.    

So what do you do to solve this problem  - if you agree with my analysis?  I think first of all you acknowledge the issue.  You are honest about the reasons why efficiency savings never happen at the scale that they are expected.  And then, to be frank, I'm not sure what you do.  In theory you reconnect your staff with the social purpose of their service, and create a culture in society where we all acknowledge the part each of us plays in helping the State to spend our money more wisely.  As I say, that's the theory.  What will happen in reality? We shall see.  I can't say I'm feeling that hopeful.  

Meeting Muhammad Yunus

Liam Black is in Bangladesh visiting a number of social businesses run by Grameen.  I've handed the blog over to him for a week to tell us what he's up to.  Here's his latest post....

Not every day you get to meet the world's best known social entrepreneur and Nobel prize winner and have dinner at a British High Commission. Well, that's what I did today. 

Amazing three hours with Yunus at Grameen HQ. He gave short talk about where his 25 (I think) businesses are up to and the rest of the time was Q and A. Questions ranged across his leadership style and the dependence of Grameen on his power and charisma, the challenges of scaling and internationalising social innovation, how to make effective partnerships with multinational companies and what will happen after he goes.

The numbers are amazing (and remember Grameen is not the biggest microfinance lender in Bangladesh): 8 million borrowers, 27,000 staff, $100 million dollars lent a month, 60% of loans are drawn from cash deposits. Grameen Phone is the biggest tax-paying company in Bangladesh with 54% of the huge mobile phone market with 50 million (that's 50 million) customers. His relationship with the Norwegian telecoms company Telenor is troubled though but I couldn't get to the bottom of that.

The group was united in its admiration of his achievements and the scale and simplicity of his vision. Can’t help but agree with his analysis that the current economic orthodoxy - business is about profit only - is a one-eyed and pathetically inadequate expression of the human. The one-dimensional nature of free-market capitalism condemning people to be "money-making robots" only has conditioned us to see the world that way. See it differently, he argues. That's all. Can business not also be structured around the innate selflessness of people, as well their selfishness? Social business, he asserts, does just that.

Paul, from IDEO, nailed it by saying that Grameen is not a financial brand but an equality brand and his message is bigger than the obvious holes and failings of some of his social business empire. Rick from Rubicon said he was a "performance artist", his businesses the artwork expressing his vision of equality. He has already achieved his goal by putting equality and the rights of the poor on the world's agenda.

And yet, and yet. Despite his protestations that Grameen would survive his departure, I'm not convinced. He is the sun around which it all revolves. From the salons of the rich in London and Washington to the villages in rural Bangladesh, Grameen is Yunus.  Ask a question of any Grameen employee and the answer always comes back to him. He resolves all big disputes, steps in when there is a problem, fronts all new ventures. Would the likes of Danone, Adidas, Veolia et al queue up to joint venture with Grameen if Yunus was not out the front?  He is all over the world all the time. Advising Japan about how to deal with their epidemic of suicide. In Colombia. In Albania. In India. His energy at 69 is breathtaking. But is he spreading himself too thinly?

A genuine one-off and he left us with much to mull over as we headed off to the British High Commission for dinner -  to meet the diplomats and local dignitaries and some Grameeners. Very nice gaff and good food. Good speech too from the High Commissioner Stephen who seemed genuinely pleased to see us.  A delayed bus back meant I could have an extra whisky. As a Brit taxpayer I felt like I deserved it.

Tomorrow we are off to the villages to see the bank in operation at the frontline. And then we travel north to Bogra to get inside the joint venture with Danone where we will be joined by Isabel, Marie and Brice from Paris. So, much more ground to cover and social business things to ponder.

A side discussion is going on in the group about Social Return on Investment - can you out a financial number against social impact? The consensus is no you can’t and you will waste much time trying to.

The group is gelling fantastically well and no major balls-ups so far. Fingers crossed and inshallah (a word I so now understand having been here!) that this will continue. 

Tired but feeling good. And Chelsea lost. Maybe there is a God and the muezzin who keeps waking me up at the crack of dawn is on to something ...

Day 3 in Dhaka

I've handed over the blog for a week to Liam Black, who's in Bangladesh visiting Grameen. Here's his latest post...

Great day. Very inspirational session with our delegates about why they have come with us to Bangladesh. Lots of intriguing life stories: Harvard educated high achiever deciding she will change the world not through homeless soup kitchens but through a multi-national: "We employ 300,000 people. Imagine what can be achieved if I can effect only one degree change in behaviour aimed at social impact revolutionising the engagement of big companies in communities"; a young entrepreneur who doesn't want to be restricted now he's at scale "I fear losing the ability to carry on regardless"; the Scandinavian business leader with lots of money to spend on social change who wants to find out what else there is besides charity, how to "not only beg the money but create the money" like Yunus; the ex -punk rocker now a leading social business leader who wants to re-radicalise her enterprise and interested how Grameen keeps turning out new businesses in new markets (a bone marrow transplant service next year apparently!); the 31 year old social entrepreneur who wants to take her enterprise global from its roots in the North East of England. "I just want to be with people who love ideas and opportunities", said a teacher from Berkeley in California. And so many more. One woman summed it up for us all be saying she was here to immerse herself in five days' "wealth of wisdom, inspiration and passion".

www.edenproject.com     www.liftshare.com  www.awayout.co.uk  

Wisdom, inspiration and passion were on display in a tour de force by Shahidul Alam who gave us the history of Bangladesh, and illustrated his talk with the brilliant images of the photographers his company Drik champions and promotes. The photos showed us the beauty of Bangladesh and its people; the amazing tenacity and resilience of people in the face of the famines, floods, pogroms and stolen elections which have punctuated their lives since independence in 1971. A number of flinch moments as the racism, divide and conquer tactics and bad faith of the British colonialists were highlighted.

www.drik.net  - if there are any commissioning editors reading this why aren't you buying their imagery??

And, then tonight, dinner with the some of the high command of Grameen including Nurjahan Begum, a tiny woman with a huge portfolio of responsibilities across the group of some two dozen Grameen branded businesses. Their generosity of spirit and willingness to be on the front foot seems to be a core characteristic of this intriguing organization. Tomorrow we are all day at Grameen HQ including two hours with Yunus. Cant wait.

Well, enough. I'm going to listen to the mighty Radcliffe and Maconie (gawd bless you BBC that iPlayer alone is worth the licence fee). Hopefully wont dream of logistics, delayed planes and the other organisational nitty griity which haunt my sub-conscious during gigs like this.

pip pip

Microcredit: officially A Good Thing?

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!

Sent from my iPhone

Rob Greenland
Social Business Consulting
07905 800 710
rob@socialbusinessconsulting.co.uk