Alex Counts is President and CEO of Grameen Foundation, and the author of “Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World” (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). Below is Part Two of this journey to assess the state of microfinance with Grameen Foundation partners worldwide.

Once my Grameen colleagues and I had visited with the village phone operators, we travelled to a tea plantation that was also a modest retreat facility about two hours outside of Jakarta.  The assembled GF staff huddled there together to review our progress in 2009 and to plan for even wider impact in 2010.  I was highly impressed by the dedication and skills of some of our newest staff whom I had never even met before.

From there I travelled to Wolfsburg, Germany, where 150 Grameen leaders gathered with Grameen Bank founder Professor Muhammad Yunus to begin a discussion of our priorities between now and 2015.  I was joined by my colleagues David Edelstein and Camilla Nestor, GF’s Vice Presidents of technology and microfinance respectively, as well as Board committee member David Stephens, one of our most dedicated volunteers anywhere.

Dr. Yunus highlighted his recent progress in getting major corporations to commit to establishing “social businesses” in Bangladesh as joint ventures with one or more Grameen companies.  The most recent partners include BASF and Adidas.  A social business is a new organizational form – something of a hybrid between a for-profit business and a non-profit organization – that Professor Yunus describes in detail in his book Creating a World Without Poverty.  Grameen Foundation proudly highlighted our two social business joint ventures, Grameen Capital India (based in Bombay) and Grameen-Jameel Pan-Arab Microfinance, Ltd. (based in Dubai), both of which were represented by their CEOs, Royston Braganza and Julia Assaad respectively.  (Grameen-Jameel was also represented by Zaher Al Munajjed, its Saudi chairman and a good friend.)

Yesterday, there was a massive event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The theme for many will be “another wall to fall,” with the focus on how poverty needs to follow the Cold War into the dustbin of history.  To symbolize this, Professor Yunus was be the final speaker at the event, which also featured many European heads of government.  I was there with Royston, Dave and his wife Sherrie and took in the spectacle, despite the cold and rainy weather.

As I headed back to my hotel at the conclusion of the fireworks display, I was more convinced than ever that there is building momentum to accelerate positive poverty reduction trends and move human society towards the ideal that Professor Yunus has envisioned.

Alex Counts is President and CEO of Grameen Foundation, and the author of “Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World” (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). Below, he recounts his visits to assess the state of microfinance with Grameen Foundation partners worldwide.

Alex Counts

I am coming to the end of my longest fall trip – it’s been a whirlwind and culminates in an emotional climax tonight.

Today, there will be a massive event to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The theme for many will be “another wall to fall,” with the focus on how poverty needs to follow the Cold War into the dustbin of history.  To symbolize this, Professor Yunus will be the final speaker at the event, which will also feature many European heads of government.

My journey began in Miami, where I was attending the board meeting of Fonkoze USA, the U.S. sister organization of the largest microfinance institution in Haiti. My journey began in Miami, where I was attending the board meeting of Fonkoze USA, the U.S. sister organization of the largest microfinance institution in Haiti. We heard Fonkoze’s co-founders, Father Joseph Philippe and Anne Hastings, report about some positive trends in the their organization and also some troubling developments in Haiti, including the fall of the government (i.e., the Prime Minister was forced out by the President) the day before we arrived in Miami – something that could set back many recently announced humanitarian projects, some of which Fonkoze would stand to benefit from.  With Haiti, even at the best of times it seems like two steps forward, one and half steps back – but Fonkoze battles on.   The board of directors of Fonkoze elected me their Chairman, in part due to the great support that they have gotten over the years from Grameen Foundation.  I was honored and humbled.

Next I went to Hong Kong, where I met some expatriate and local Chinese donors who have been backing our work in what has become our Asian regional hub.  Our Asia CEO Jennifer Meehan took me around for these meetings before we left for Jakarta.  There, we met up with about 30 Grameen Foundation colleagues, including several highly skilled full-time volunteers who are working out of our Hong Kong office these days.  We broke into groups and did field visits to learn about the progress of our latest “village phone” project where we enable poor women to start a business selling use of her phone to local people who cannot afford their own phone, and also reselling airtime minutes (in Indonesia and in much of the world, airtime is pre-paid rather than post-paid as it is in much of the United States).

I met three women whose husbands were doing anything from occasional day labor to a regular factory job and earning up to $2 per day to support families ranging in size from five to nine members.  Each woman reported that the phone business was growing, and the one I met who had been going the longest – since July – reported net profits of $2 per day, exactly what her husband earned when he could find work.  The need for both micro-franchise opportunities, which is to say pre-packaged business solutions like village phone that designed for a poor entrepreneur, and the credit to make these businesses viable, was very clear to all of us who collectively interviewed about 15 women.  By March, there will be 1,200 village phone businesses in operation in Indonesia thanks to GF’s local team and our grant from Qualcomm.

Will Marre is the co-founder and former president of the Covey Leadership Center (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), CEO of the REALeadership Alliance, and the author of “Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner” (Capital Books, 2009). The following is from a Tuesday, Oct 27 entry on his blog, Thought Rocket.

Today the Grameen Foundation is launching $27 on the 27th. This is to commemorate Dr. Mohammed Yunus’ first micro-loan back in 1976. He loaned $27 to a group of impoverished women in Bangladesh who were living on less than $1 a day while working their hearts out. The economic system of the rural villages was designed by middle class traders to keep their village work forces in constant debt. The women that Dr. Yunus loaned his money to were making a profit of 2 cents a day. Almost immediately their profits increased 50 times to over a dollar a day. Within a few years Yunus had founded the Grameen Bank, which means Village Bank, and thousands of poor women have become self-reliant, often doubling or increasing their net income by 10 times within months of having a legitimate source of investment capital.

Today the Grameen Foundation supports over 200 micro-finance institutions operating around the world from Asia to Africa, China to the Middle East. There are now over 150 million families benefiting from micro-investment capital. The power of this business model is that it is a business. Interest is charged to support the micro banks so that they can loan more money and keep it in an endless virtuous cycle of reinvestment. Today the Grameen Foundation is operating with the wisdom of a global social enterprise by helping create software and other technology solutions to help microfinance banks operate with high efficiency. They are also creating micro-franchises so that village entrepreneurs can establish solar-powered villages while reducing the need for diesel and kerosene. They’re helping women become village eyeglass dispensers so that people over 40 can read on their cell phones and of course they have brought cell phone technology to tens of millions of people in the developing world. For the first time in history we can actually imagine a world without poverty driven by the values of self-reliance. After doing this for 30 years we now know that women are the world’s best poverty fighters because they reinvest in their children and their communities.

Today the Grameen Foundation is seeking to establish a constant and reliable source of donor income. They are asking us to contribute $27 a month every month, a little less than a dollar a day. What they hope to do with this sustainable flow of money is build a worldwide system that provides capital, education, access to basic health care, technology and leadership development to help the poorest of the poor lift themselves to a life of dignity. Their vision is a poverty free world.

I have adopted the Grameen Foundation as my central cause because I have never seen so much sustainable good achieved by integrating the best of business practices and the highest moral vision that human beings can aspire to. So I invite you to consider becoming part of this great movement to end poverty. Go to the Grameen Foundation and join up. I already have.

Today, Grameen Foundation is launching the Ingenuity Fund, our new fundraising effort that aims to create a village – or grameen – of online advocates and funders.

You can support the launch of the Ingenuity Fund by participating in our first initiative, “$27 on the 27th.”  In 1976, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus planted the seed that created Grameen Bank by making a loan of $27 to a group of 42 Bangladeshi stool makers out of his own pocket. Professor Yunus’ simple, yet ingenious action has revolutionized the way in which we combat poverty around the world and offers inspiration to people looking to make an impact with their charitable donation.

Here is how you can join us in our “$27 on the 27th” initiative:

• Join our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/StopPovertyNow and participate in our Facebook notes campaign “10 Things Under $27 I Can Live Without to Change the World.”  Get your friends thinking about the difference they could make with $27.
• Follow us on Twitter @GrameenFdn and reTweet our $27 on the 27th messages to spread the word.
• Make a donation of $27 (or more) to demonstrate your support at www.grameenfoundation.org/ingenuity.  Through the generosity of a group of Grameen Foundation supporters, all donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $200,000.  By donating today, you can increase the already powerful impact of your contribution.

Also, make sure to check out our newly redesigned Web site at www.grameenfoundation.org. We hope you’ll be just as excited about the new look and site features as we are, including enhanced success stories and an interactive map highlighting where we work around the world.

Your daily dose of lattes. Dinner out with friends. Cab fare.

The money you spend on items like these in one week could help us impact the lives of poor people around the world. So what would you give up for one week to help end poverty? How much money would that raise for poor families? Tell us below and then send us a Tweet or Facebook message.

Alex Counts is President and CEO of Grameen Foundation.

Cashpor client receives her loan

Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal about the activities of Indian microfinance institutions (MFIs) and the role global investors are playing in the sector’s development have sparked intense debate about microfinance losing its way. While the articles do highlight a few real challenges facing clients and MFIs in some isolated cases, we believe they contain significant errors, omissions and distortions. Two leading microfinance practitioners, Vikram Akula of SKS and Samit Ghosh of Ujjivan, have critiqued the articles and we encourage people to read what they have written.

When Grameen Foundation first began working in India in 2000, many of today’s leading MFIs were still in their early stages. There has been remarkable growth and outreach since then, with MFIs now serving more than 15 million households and a significant reduction in poverty. India’s microfinance sector has also emerged as a model for other countries; for instance, efficiency gains have made it possible to lend profitably at lower interest rates than virtually any country except for Bangladesh and Bolivia.

With this expansion have come the inevitable growing pains that occur in any new industry. The Indian microfinance sector has already acknowledged some of these issues—such as cases of over-indebtedness in a few areas of a few southern states—and is implementing plans to address them. The reporter also missed a golden opportunity to discuss how they are being addressed: national and state-level microfinance associations are already working to share best practices— particularly those related to preventing client indebtedness—and a bill pending in India’s parliament would finally place MFIs under a single regulator (a step long advocated by microfinance practitioners and Grameen Foundation, as part of a larger reform effort).

The strength of microfinance lies in the opportunities it provides to the poor and the responsibilities it demands from both clients and MFIs. During the past decade, we have worked with key organizations in the sector including CASHPOR, SKS, SHARE and Grameen Koota and also co-founded Grameen Capital India to help smaller Indian MFIs access much needed funding. Today, one of our key goals is helping MFIs track how well they are meeting their mission of reaching the poor and moving them out of poverty through tools such as the Progress out of Poverty Index ™. We hope that accountability measures like these and the proactive steps already underway will go a long way in helping to break India’s generational cycle of poverty.

Emily Snodden is a rising senior at Westminster School in Connecticut.

Emily at a Village Meeting

The beads of sweat had long ago dripped down my spine and saturated my blouse with moisture as we approached what seemed to be a village. The scattered houses made from decaying plywood, tin, and mud looked similar to the huts I see on commercials late at night trying to raise money for starving children. However, I saw a few cable dishes weighing down the roofs they rested on and realized the slight prosperity in this devastated surrounding. Our guide paused outside the walls of the village to wait for members of our group who had fell behind.

As we waited a few locals passed, each person radiating in gratefulness. One elder man made me wonder, ignorantly, what he had to be grateful for. I guessed from his darkened, worn skin that he had spent many years laboring in the scorching sun and assumed he has little to show for his efforts. Even so as he passed atop his donkey and the inconceivable amounts of lavender he carried into the village, he shot me a welcoming, toothless smile that sent shivers down my sweat drenched back. When we finally entered the village, a woman, holding one child on her hip and carrying another in a shawl that hung around her neck, was bent over a stream scooping water into a metal pale.

Analyzing the situation, it became apparent there was no source of running water. The mothers in our group hastily advised against drinking anything offered to us when we reached the site the borrowers had arranged especially for our visit. The meeting spot was bland but obviously heart felt. A few hand crafted blankets lay on the ground, centered around a small wooden table with a tea kettle, bread, and honey spread awaiting our consumption. The enthusiasm of the large crowd of Berber people studying our every move intimidated me. The crowd, mostly women and children, sat around the table after we had made ourselves comfortable.  The borrowers then started to explain how the Grameen Foundation partner FONDEP and micro financing changed their lives.

I listened intently to the translator and observed the deep expressions of the women through my camera lens. Zooming in on one leader’s face as she laughed at her own aspiration to marry an American man, I could not help but feel the intensity and determination that accompanied her humor. I later learned that this hard working woman had no source of income or job before FONDEP gave her a loan to start making clothes to sell in the market. The loan gave her the opportunity to support herself. The woman’s happiness was remarkable. She did not have enough money to buy a cable box or even live on her own. But FONDEP gave her the opportunity to start a business. The opportunity to know at the end of the day she would have a meal to eat. This Berber women has since paid back her loan and employs 3 women in her clothing business. Although she must walk nearly 10 miles to sell her clothes at the market, she is grateful that  Grameen Foundation and FONDEP have made it possible for her to create her own opportunities.

As we left the village, I thought back to this woman’s face and her deep gratefulness. I now know what the lavender man passing by that morning was grateful for. He was grateful for opportunities and he was grateful to be alive.

Muhammad Yunus attended a reception in his honor, following his receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and delivered a stirring speech about his 33 year fight against poverty and what he plans in for the future.

Watch on YouTube.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Yeardley Smith is the voice of television character Lisa Simpson, and an active Grameen Foundation supporter.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Hello Delightfuls,

Pull up a chair, I have had a very fancy 43 hours!

I just got back from Washington, DC, where I attended a private reception co-hosted by my favorite Grameen Foundation, for Professor Muhammad Yunus, Mary Robinson, and Dr.  Pedro Jos Greer, all of whom received the Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday.

You can imagine that when I said I was going to DC for the party, my friends had two questions for me: What are you going to wear? And do you get to attend the ceremony itself and meet President and Mrs. Obama?

The answer to question #1 is: I wore a silk, blue and white flowered cocktail dress from the 1960’s, with a scoop neck, shirred bodice, sarong-style skirt, and cap sleeves. I finished it off with peau de soie, navy-blue peep toes. Nobody needs to know it took me three hours of trying on everything in my closet in Los Angeles to come up with that effortless ensemble.

The answer to question #2 is: No, I didn’t get to go the ceremony and meet the President and Mrs. O., but I got to meet people who met them! Alex Counts said he shook the President’s hand for about 30 seconds. So, of course, I shook Alex’s hand extra long last night. You know, glory by association.

The highlight of the evening for me was seeing Professor Yunus. We had met at a small dinner party in his honor in May, and I liked him instantly. I just wanted to sit next to him that night and smile at him. His mere presence makes you feel happy inside. And he’s funny! I had no idea he would be so funny.  He loves a good joke.

When we saw each other last night we burst into grins, gave each other a big bear hug and a kiss on each cheek.  He introduced me to his daughter, Monica, and her new husband, Brendon, who are both huge “Simpsons” fans. (Such fun.) I told him he’ll need to build himself an extra house for all the awards he’s collecting these days. And he asked me when I was coming to visit Bangladesh. (December).

As I stood there talking to this man who carries the vast impact of his achievements with unassuming grace; who is so imminently approachable –allowing me to weigh the Medal of Freedom in the palm of my hand as we talked (it’s heavy!)– I was deeply moved by the way each accolade still seems to mean so much to him. There wasn’t a shadow of indifference in his smile last night. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Presidential Medal of Freedom was the first time he’s ever been recognized for his 30+ years in the fight against poverty.

The cherry on top was visiting the Grameen Foundation offices on F Street before I headed back to the airport this afternoon. As a bona fide Grameen groupie, I liked seeing the Com Center and Alex’s messy desk. (I can’t prove it, but I know it’s true: All trail blazers have messy desks.) The staff greeted me warmly and I was honored to speak for a few minutes at the beginning of their lunchtime staff meeting about my Grameen trip to Haiti in May.  I thanked them for doing the heavy lifting back home. It made them smile. They were a most gracious audience.
So there you have it. I think I was in DC for all of 43 hours, but I loved every minute of it.

~Yeardley