.Celebrating Microcredit across America
Post to MicroFinacePractice:
Grameen America and Dr Yunus Social Business Model
I would love to hear from anyone in this group
who is reading Dr Yunus' new book : Creating a world without poverty : Social Business, Future of Capitalism. I found
this book so inspiring that I have bought 1000 copies to help form readers clubs in every city we can link up. As you may
know the book takes everything Dr Yunus has learnt from 30+ years of community-up organisational modelling with microcredit
and asks why not develop parallel business models for community-up health, agriculture, education, consumer channels and governance.
Every success that microcredit makes also helps make the case for sustainability investment in these paralel areas of social
business modelling. Here are a few of the most significant moments of the US banking story as I have understood it in 2008.
Of course I delight in being told of more. NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Professor
Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and the founding father of the microfinance
movement, will officiate at a
formal grand opening of the first branch of Grameen America, in the New York City borough of Queens on April 25, 2008,with
a special reception for borrowers, community leaders, friends, and the news media.
March
1 Wall Street Journal covers Grameen America Launch in weekend column and contrasts such Purpsoeful banking of microcredit
with such dismal banking industry leadership as that which subprime has reached. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120432950873204335.html?mod=djm_HAWSJSB_WelcomeSkip
Jan 23 at New York book talk : 9 year old poses tough question to
Dr Yunus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVPabnBpEis This is part of 5 hours of video filming that Dr Yunus has permitted us to make this year Across the channel, arguably Dr Yunus' best video to date was made earlier this week out of UK Prime Minister's
office http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klUu03EMeRs
I want to help make a catalogue of microcredit's 25 most inspiring 2 minute videos of all time
so that people of every age and demographic can see what an extraordinary opportunity to unite in celebrating humanity we
have if we start mapmaking how to trust community up micro-models of social business in ways that everyone can join in whether
their sector expertise is in banking for the poor or any other service that empowers the rise of entrepreneurial women http://www.valuetrue.com/home/gallery.cfm and youth and the ending of poverty.
chris macrae us 301 881 1655 editor@futurecapitalism.tv
celebrating microcredit http://www.wholeplanet.tv/id26.html
| .Celebrating microcredit across Africa- help us report nation by nation - exatrcat:
Calendar for Africa From London *2005 - African Commission Report Published; 7/7 tube bomb attack day G8 leaders ntended to discuss commission report; Blair
conceded the year had no direct impact *2006 - Blair supports formation of Africa Progress Panel to transparently challenge the G8 to keep on doing stuff for Africa *2007 - Blair's reign ends; Brown makes his people power speech at the UN http://peoplepower.jp *2008- April Dr Yunus takes over Downing Street for 2 minutes to Youtube to the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k lUu03EMeRs . Brown applauds . Microcredit now establised community-up aid as a different way from global down aid. Help us journalise
this magic shift in resoirces as it rolls out community building african country by country BangladeshInfo.com reports: Yunus proposes coordinated global initiative to contain food price hike...Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad
Yunus requested British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take leadership role within the European community and the G-8 for
addressing the extreme difficulties created to the poor by the global rise in prices of essential food items... Prof. Yunus
proposed a coordinated global initiative to redress the immediate pressure, according to a message received from Yunus Secretariat....The
pioneer of a an alternative banking system for lending to the poor met the Prime Minister of the UK at 10 Downing Street on
Monday-at a time when there has been a brouhaha over food problem in Bangladesh as well as across the globe...The Nobel Peace
Prize winner pointed out that a powerful breakthrough is needed in agri-technology to raise the production level in the shortest
possible time...Gordon Brown announced that the UK Government would work with the Grameen Group and other partners to give
access to and unlock the power of financial services for Africa's poor...The Prime Minister and the Nobel Laureate discussed
the public and private sectors’ work to help unlock the power of micro-credit to improve the lives of millions, particularly
in Africa, where the world's development emergency hits hardest and nearly 300m people still live on less than $1 a day...With
foreign investment into micro- credit across the globe tripling to $4 billion between 2004 and 2006, and through the work
of organizations like the Grameen Trust, which reaches over 4.7 million families through 141 partner organizations in 38 countries,
the impact of micro-credit is being felt all over the world...Yunus said that there is an urgent need to improve business
and management skills in the micro-finance industry in Africa to make sure this money is used to help people from the world's
poorest communities...As a first step, the UK Government will provide £500,000, towards bridging the skill gap in the
micro-credit industry in Africa, which will be more than matched by the private sector... The initiative will bring together
civil-society organizations and the private sector to contribute the funding, knowledge and skills required to bring micro-finance
to those who need it most. </font> I'll put an entry for each country so that comments that follow can be
summarised by relevant country Algeria 114.73 Angola 44.03 Benin 4.78 Botswana 10.33 Burkina Faso 6.21 Burundi
0.81 Cameroon 18.32 Cape Verde 1.14 Central African Republic 1.49 Chad 6.54 Comoros 0.40 Democratic Republic of the Congo
8.54 Congo 7.39 Côte d'Ivoire 17.48 Djibouti 0.76 Egypt 107.48 Equatorial Guinea 8.56 Eritrea 1.09 Ethiopia 13.32
Gabon 9.55 Gambia 0.51 Ghana 12.91 Guinea 3.32 Guinea-Bissau 0.30 Kenya 21.19 Lesotho 1.48 Liberia 0.63 Libya 50.32 Madagascar
5.50 Malawi 2.23 Mali 5.93 Mauritania 2.66 Mauritius 6.45 Morocco 57.31 Mozambique 7.61 Namibia 6.37 Niger 3.54 Nigeria 114.69
Réunion (France) 15.98[43] Rwanda 2.49 São Tomé and Príncipe 0.12 Senegal 8.94 Seychelles 0.75
Sierra Leone 1.44 Somalia 0.06[41] South Africa 254.99 Sudan 37.57 Swaziland 2.65 Tanzania 12.78 Togo 2.21 Tunisia 30.30 Uganda
9.32 Zambia 10.91 Zimbabwe 5.01 a good list of mfi discussion groups and blogs is http://microfinancegateway.org/s ection/discussion_groups | Celebrating Microcredit across the Planet |
