The next day I called in Maimuna, a university student who collected data for me, and I asked her to assist me in making a list of how many in Jobra, like Sufia, were borrowing from traders and missing out on what they should have been earning from the fruits of their labours. Within a week we had prepared a list. It named forty-two people who in total had borrowed 856 taka, a total of less than $27. 'My God, my God, all this misery in all these forty-two families all because of the lack of $27!' I exclaimed. Maimuna stood there without saying a word. We were both astounded, shocked, but also sickened by the pathos of it all. (From: Banker to the Poor , page 11)
The first edition of Yunus' autobiography, was published in 1998 and I read it in 1999, during a short period of unemployment. The truth Yunus discovered is the poor are kept poor because they can't get credit. Without credit they are trapped in a cycle of poverty. In Bangladesh the amounts they need are unbelievably small. This made the Grameen Bank a possibility.
Like so many of the radical ideas that really work, this approach is based upon trust. It is not about making a profit, but it is about helping people prove their own ability to work their way out of poverty. Why are we not able to do this in our communities in Britain?
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