 2008-08-06 - banker to the poor
A well written book about how Yunus successfully lent money to impoverished people in Bangladesh and, in so doing, empowered them to create better lives for themselves. The pages echo Yunus's faith in the human spirit, his dedication to eradicating poverty, and his tenacity to succeed in the face of naysayers cries. He talks about the origins of the banks name, The Grameen Bank and notes that Grameen derives from the word gram, or village.
Yunus denounces typical methods of poverty reduction, such as those that tie funds to skills training. And he acknowledges that he has critics in this regard. He writes, "I firmly believe that all human beings have an innate skill. I call it the survival skill. The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability. They do not need us to teach them how to survive; they already know how to do this. So rather than waste our time teaching them new skills, we try to make maximum use of their existing skills. Giving the poor access to credit allows them to immediate put into practice the skills they already know - to weave, husk rice patty, raise cows, peddle a rickshaw." (p. 140).
 2008-07-28 - Banker to the Poor
Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
This is a life changing book! This book will change the way that you think about poverty and how to end it. In this book, Professor Yunus tells of his own journey in first recognising that the University in which he lectured in Economics, needed to impact his local community, and secondly, doing something about it. The book has all of the elements of a good novel, humour, romance, and drama, but it is so much more. Buy this book, read this book, and then join Kiva.org to make a difference.
2008-07-13 - Wonderful and Inspiring!
This audio book was absolutely wonderful. I found it really inspiring and engaging. I was really surprised by how interesting it was, I was afraid it would be a little dry but that wasn't true at all. I enjoyed every chapter. This book really did make me want to change my life, it gave me a lot to think about that I'm still working with. In fact I hope I never stop thinking about it and the issues it opened up.
The reader was very good, he had enough inflection in his voice to keep it interesting, but did not over play the words. It was the sort of narration that provided a similar feeling to reading myself, where I could put my own emphasis and voice to the words and not be distracted by the an overly dramatic narrator.
2008-06-18 - Amazing read!
Banker to the Poor is a really clear way of explaining what microfinance is as well as showing the drastic difference that $40 can make in people's lives. Shows the humanitarianism of microlending, why it's better than just giving people money, and how it can be a useful tool to help many people. I really recommend this book for anyone, and especially so for anyone interested in helping others or setting up programs to help others (my church is using microlending now).
2008-06-14 - Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness... and credit
Muhammad Yunus constructed a system in Bangladesh to help the poorest of the poor get loans for tiny amounts of money. Since its inception 1980, variations on this system have spread all over the world with great success.
Yunus starts with the premise that credit should be a right, not a privilege, and the people who need credit the most are the ones locked out of the standard credit system. He recounts a story of a woman who makes bamboo stools. She borrows money to buy the raw materials from a middleman, and as repayment for that loan, she is forced to give the finished stool back to him. He then pays her 2 cents for her work. The raw materials cost only 22 cents, and if she just had that capital herself, she could buy her own bamboo and reap all of the profits from the final sale of the stool. But she doesn't have 22 cents and therefore is effectively a debt slave.
Most people who hear about the concept of microfinance for the poor immediately ask, "Why do poor people pay the loans back?" The answer provided in "Banker to the Poor" is multi-faceted and not wholly satisfying, but it is clear that the system does work. Repayment rates are generally higher than loans given to the so-called credit worthy in standard loan arrangements. A rate of over 98% has been achieved.
Repayment is encouraged by a combination of (1) a high level of interaction between bank workers and the borrower's communities, (2) fair and respectful treatment by the bank, (3) the formation local peer groups to encourage repayment, (4) short loan terms with weekly payments, (5) loans primarily to women, and (6) the fact that the borrowers know this is their one shot -- if they shirk repayment, they are screwed. Their *lives* are their collateral.
The book is an easy, entertaining read, and the enthusiasm of the author for the topic is clear. His stories of individuals who have risen out of poverty through micro-loans is stirring, but toward the end of the book, he talks about poverty in a more philosophical way, and one can't help criticizing his idealism. He proposes a version of socially-conscious capitalism that he claims could help eradicate poverty from the entire world. Under his proposed system, corporations would be motivated by the sum of social utility and profit, not just profit alone. It's a nice thought, but it seems a little naive. But perhaps it takes such unbridled idealism to truly make an important difference in the world, as it seems Yunus has done.
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