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| Credit and Woman Power |
| Microcredit and integral economics fights the worst of violences: poverty |
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Layne Hartsell (prose)  |
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Published 2008-08-20 15:42 (KST) |
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Over the past year and a half, the power of women using microcredit to alleviate their own poverty has come to the forefront of world awareness.
The catalyst for this phenomenon was the 2006 Nobel Peace Award which was given to Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Microcredit is the use of small amounts of money, usually $50-$100, to help women to buy necessary materials for their home businesses. After they make their goods and harvest their produce, they repay their microcredit, create savings and use their profits for their families. In this way, microcredit is a renewable resource.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| To date, the Grameen Bank has shared more than $7 billion with the poor. The repayment rate of Grameen microcredit is an incredible 98.2 percent.
We might ask, "What is so special about a bank? Banks are interested in getting people into debt and making a profit." I share such a concern, but true microcredit banks operate in the reverse. While they do have income, the bank is set up to respond to the needs of the poor, where bank employees are committed to service and members own the bank.
The bank does not focus on the accumulation of massive sums of money for high salaries and expensive, unnecessary buildings; it functions to keep money in the hands of the poor. Microcredit is part of a larger field called integral economics which has only just begun to blossom, on a mass scale. There is plenty of room for expansion as social and green entrepreneurs lend their skills.
In 2001, I was living in Mexico and in the United States when I came into contact with this truly golden idea of Dr. Yunus. My imagination was captured. Immediately, I began to search for an opportunity to experiment. The first experiment began early in 2002, with poor women in the village of Aguaje, Veracruz, Mexico. The experiment became the basis for the current NGO, Integral Trust Fund-Peaceful Family, located in Southeast Asia. At ITF, we call a microcredit loan an "i-Share" because of the overall focus on sharing with others.
Since the beginnings of the Integral Trust Fund, I have studied the subject of economics intensely and have seen the strong connection between serious social issues and the corporatism and consumerism of the First World. I have seen economic and military hegemony, first hand, by travelling into impoverished regions and into militarized zones. I have met people who were born in the "wrong" geographical location, because the natural resources which were under their homes or in their forests were coveted by large corporations. The corporations were seeking astronomical profits while the people slid into desperation.
Poverty is the worst of violences. Poverty leads to terrible conflict. Poverty is an affront to human dignity. In some cases the people try to defend themselves, while in other cases, poverty drives recruits into terror networks, where highly organized groups act on "behalf of the poor."
Many of the poor, due to the fact that they are in the way of the corporate bulldozer, move away from their homes. The mass exodus which has been underway in North and South America is a reality which continues to mar any concept we may have of a civil global world. The answer to such a complex situation is not an easy matter. However, there are constructive steps that can be taken to ease the social strife, better local economies and help the people to take hold of their destinies.
To ignore the suffering of the poor, or to maintain apathy, are not options, unless we are comfortable with the consequences that history will bear out in our name. Proactive, constructive efforts are needed.
The subtle beauty of the microcredit story is that the world can now see the economics of poverty and the connection between the alleviation of unnecessary suffering and the generation of peace.
The poor are doing what they can do. Our part, as citizens in the First World, is to relinquish our extravagances and to restrain our corporations who are exploiting the poor and the natural environment. Secondly, the field of social and green business has the research and applications in place for the transformation of the poverty of those at the bottom of the pyramid. As a moral imperative, we can support those businesses which operate on an integral economics model.
To those of us who have heard of microcredit, we are amazed at what a small amount of money can do for a poor family. Over time, borrowers develop consistency in their businesses because of the support of the bank or fund. And, larger sums of money are made available so that families can move from serious poverty to a milder form of poverty, or even end poverty in their lives and graduate to simplicity.
I hope that others will find microcredit and other forms of socially and ecologically responsible business as appealing as I have. I feel that greater mutuality and interrelationship with each other, and the natural world, is within our reach. We have the information, the technology and the wealth to move forward in a significant way.
Our best gauge of progress will be the empowerment of women, equally and everywhere.
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| Layne Hartsell has graduate degrees in biomedicine and developmental psychology. Currently, he is the coordinator of the NGO, Integral Trust Fund-Peaceful Family, and is a professor at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. |
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©2008 OhmyNews
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