Thamizarasi does not know job safety or regular income. Work comes and goes for this 40-something agri-labourer in Alakudi, a village in Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu. This month, for instance, farm owners did not need labourers like her because the local dam was yet to release water to irrigate their fields. During such...
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Buying local isn’t just about freshness. Source: Published in Yes! Magazine.
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Local currencies value time, build community, and keep business moving even when credit dries up. Total dependence on one currency is like total dependence on one crop, or, for that matter, a single energy source: there’s always the risk that crop failure or a cutoff in supply will topple the whole system. This is...
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Americans want to invest locally: here’s how. The Obama Administration believes that the best way to repair our financial system after the Great Crash of 2008 is to improve the performance and oversight of global banks and investment firms. A growing number of Americans, however, would prefer to pull their retirement savings out of...
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Social activist and local living economies advocate shares her investment secrets I have always felt uneasy about the stock market. As a longtime organizer and a local restaurant founder and owner, I put nearly all of my money, time, and energy into my local community, rather than into global corporate investments. When I inherited...
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What began with a loan of $27 to 42 women in a small village 33 years ago has grown into a global microcredit movement that has changed the lives of millions of poor people around the world. Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, was the guest speaker at Wharton’s MBA...
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Founded in 1983 by Muhammad Yunus, the Grameen Bank (Grameen is Bangledeshi for “village”) provides small loans to rural borrowers in Bangladesh. In the years since, the Bank has become so succesful (Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006),that a whole community of Grameen enterprises—known as the Grameen Bank Family of Companies—have sprung...
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SHARE Microcredit Program from E. F. Schumacher Society The Self-Help Association for a Regional Economy (SHARE) is a model community-based nonprofit that offers a simple way for citizens to create a sustainable local economy by supporting businesses that provide products or services needed in the region. SHARE makes micro-credit loans available at manageable interest...
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Microenterprise is an escape valve for social tension at times of crisis, and microbusinesses do a better job of weathering the storm than bigger companies because they are used to overcoming difficulties – a positive effect that is further multiplied when it involves women. “Microbusiness owners have always operated in tough conditions. For them,...
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E. F. Schumacher Society Local Currencies and Self-Financing Tools The theory, history, and practice of the Schumacher Society’s work with local currencies is detailed in Local Currencies: Catalysts for Sustainable Regional Economies. Additionally, Bob Swann, founder of the E. F. Schumacher society, wrote several clear, compelling essays on local currencies, which can be found...
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Some of the major misconceptions about microfinance — small loans of under $100 that enable Third World residents to become entrepreneurs — can be summed up by what happened roughly a decade ago, when the pioneering Grameen Bank decided to help female villagers in Bangladesh enter the mobile phone business. Alex Counts — CEO...
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Almost everyone wants to help the poor. In a world where many demand profits of 10%, 20%, 30% or more on their money, people donate to the poor despite a return of “negative 100%,” said Alex Counts, president and chief executive of the Grameen Foundation, which is dedicated to lifting people out of poverty...
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Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves....
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Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus It began with a simple $27 loan. After witnessing the cycle of poverty that kept many poor women enslaved to high-interest loan sharks in Bangladesh, Dr. Muhammad Yunus lent money to 42 women so they could purchase bamboo to make...
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Attention around the world in recent weeks has been focused on microfinance and its untapped potential in developing countries like India, triggered by the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize that went last month to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, the microfinance organization he founded in Bangladesh three decades ago. The prize helped reemphasize the appeal...
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