Battle Against Poverty In Bangladesh

It was this vision of change that spurred Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, to set up Grameen Bank in Bangladesh during the 1970s. Yunus had two major drives for his vision of the future: “to make credit a human right so that each individual human being will have the opportunity to take loans and implement his or her ideas so that self exploration becomes possible. And second: that it will lead to a world where nobody has to suffer from poverty – a world completely free from poverty.”

The Bank’s philosophy was simple: to lend out small loans, averaging under $400 per person, to those who had no access to credit facilities, creating growth opportunities for entrepreneurship. To date, the Bank has lent out almost $9 billion in microcredit loans, making a difference to over 8 million of Bangladesh’s poor.

Meeting life’s needs

Emergencies, weddings, funerals, theft or injury are often definitive events for the poor in developing countries. In “The Poor and their Money,” Stuart Rutherford cites several needs such as lifecycle needs, personal emergencies and disasters. These are all events that can devastate a family already mired in poverty and struggling to make a living, like that of Ibu Samsariah from Indonesia.

A canal fisherwoman and oyster gatherer in the village of Ruko, Ibu Samsariah’s husband worked as a mini van driver. Her two sons worked as day labourers when there were jobs to be found. Their four combined incomes allowed them to meet their basic needs until the 2004 tsunami hit the shores of Ruko, sweeping Ibu Samsariah’s husband, their home and all their possessions out to sea. With no husband, no father, no home, no fishing tools and no income, Samsariah struggled to survive.

In 2006 she formed a borrowers group and received a $100 loan from Yayasan Mirtra Dhuafa (YAMIDA). Using this loan, she bought fishing equipment to re-start her business. She found buyers for her oysters at the local market, repaid her loan and is now looking to apply for a larger amount to open her own stall.

Without access to microcredit, Samsariah’s fate would have been far different. With no means to regain a source of income after the tsunami disaster, it seems likely that she would have spent the rest of her life struggling to make ends meet. Now, Samsariah has big plans and dreams; profits from her oyster stall will allow her to hire an assistant to fish and shell the produce, thereby increasing both profit and employment in her small community.

A leg up

Almost by definition, the poor have very little money and therefore little chance of investing in opportunities or of improving their circumstances. Without credit, they are unable to expand their business, improve their housing or buy assets. Kofi Annan, erstwhile leader of the United Nations, believes that “poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge,” and that microcredit is a way to “bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.”

Small loans can transform the lives of the poor, give them social mobility, secure the future of their children and improve their social standing. In male-dominated societies, the practice of lending money predominantly to women also helps to drive equality and social change.

Charity Kulola, from Kenya, does not dispute the power of microcredit to change lives. Married off at 16 into a polygamous marriage, then expelled for not bearing a son, Charity had no income and no way of supporting herself or her daughters. An initial loan of $64 given by the Yehu Microfinance Trust was used to open a coconut stall in the seaside village of Charareli. As sales took off, Charity took out a second loan, then a third to invest in a retail shop and to diversify her business. Instead of merely being the third wife to a man not of her own choosing, Charity is now a successful entrepreneur, intent on sending her daughters to school so that they can have a better future.

Alleviating poverty

Although micro lending is not the definitive answer to ending poverty, it is an effective tool for breaking the poverty cycle. Micro finance is “not a charity. This is business; business with a social objective, which is to help people get out of poverty” (Muhammad Yunus). Unlike handouts or charity, microcredit helps to empower the poor and encourages them to lift themselves out of poverty.

In rural Haiti, Dieula Calixte worked as a servant, sometimes starving for days when she couldn’t find work. Often ill and unable to hold down a steady job, Dieula applied for a $68 loan from Esperanza International and started her own business selling snacks. Within six months, she had paid off her loan in full and increased her capital to $69. She now earns almost $2 a day and is financing a second loan to expand her business. The income from her work allows Dieula to obtain the medications she requires and puts food on the table each day. She is enthusiastic about the role of microfinance in her community, acknowledging that without the initial loan, she would still be hungry, poor and ill, condemned to the cycle of poverty. Source

Oilmen Fund Anti-Global Warming Groups

The Young Turk lays it down about global warming, its doubts and its funders.

Who has to gain from denying it?
Why are solar caps melting ?

To much toxins in the air and not enough Trees to recycle it, We are killing the planet slowly, but when push, come to shove, the planet will get rid of us in seconds.God wrath on earth is witness by millions, from all nations and colors.

When will we understand that the earth works on a delicate system which must be nurished and taken care of,as it takes care of us 99.5 % of the time.

Why the west should heed Japan's economic lead

So Japan's a regimented country, with a cowed people fearful of breaking rules? Hardly. I've never seen so many people laughing, smiling and relaxed. Japan is the most equal society on earth. The top 10% of earners have 4.5 times the income of the bottom 10%. In Britain the top 10% grab 13.8 times the share taken by the lowest 10%.

I suppose I was experiencing a street-level view of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's superb book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Yet in a week spent visiting companies, speaking to economists and interrogating investment analysts, I think I was supposed to reach a rather different conclusion.

The Anglo-American school of capitalism scoffs at Japan. It's a bubble economy that burst and which, two decades later, still can't revive. Companies won't shed labour or cut costs. Runaway public spending floods into pork-barrel construction projects creating a fiscal deficit that makes even Greece look prudent. The country is, they say, quite literally on a road (and a bridge, and a tunnel) to nowhere. Meanwhile in the west – but especially in the US – dynamic capitalism destroys but then renews.

If your head never left the pages of right-wing economic textbooks (and you swallow the guff that manufacturing doesn't matter any more) you might believe all this. Indeed, World Bank figures show that back in 1995, Japan's nominal GDP was $5.3tn (£3.5tn), or not that far short of the US's $7.3tn. Since then, Japan's nominal GDP has actually fallen to $5.1tn, while the US is now at $14.3tn. The economic evidence is clear: Japan is a basket case, and the US is our only model.

Yet there are no Detroits in this supposedly failing economy. Instead you realise the price we pay for winner-takes-all capitalism. Arriving back in Britain, I came through BAA's gruesome Heathrow terminal three (thank you, the money makers behind its debt-laden takeover). In the underground, I shoved coins into the ticket vending machine. Of course it was broken. The District, Circle and Jubilee lines were all out of action (thank you, public/private partnership). At Victoria, I boarded a depressingly dirty train (thank you, train-leasing financiers).

Japan has its problems, not least its 200%-plus public sector debt. But it has a lot to teach us about social cohesion, while still producing world-class companies – and bosses who take pay cuts rather than make redundancies.

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