JB's official web is http://jamiibora.org JB.net is part of the world tour of GT co-produced by editorial group members of Journal of Social Business and hi-tech or hi-trust friends of YunusConnects.com and YouthandYunus.com

 
 Jamii Bora KENYA Safe banking for Mobile Youth's poorestUse of crowdmapping to sustain people's trust after national election crisis  Business school for any person who wants to become most productive however personally abused, unhealthy or addicted their prior familial/communal experience Kaputei: Africa's most loved housing estate and sustainable ecovilage Coming soon - microcredit's most exciting example of community radio Since 1999, one of planet's two (1 2) greatest labs for social business labs for entrepreneurial revolutionary tests in multiple-win mapping of youth-public-private partnerships - reports on JB always welcome; partnership reports of most interest in 2011 include wholeplanetfoundation - rsvp info@worldcitizen.tv

We are writing a book on why Ingrid Munro is one if the 8 happiest economists of all time - sample profile:

Ingrid Munro is an alumni of Muhammad Yunus. As recently as 1999 she started a Kenya microecredit “Jamii Bora meaning Happy Families”. What’s extraordinary is her most productive members are youth who used to rove nairobi as gangs of thieves and girls of street. Most people including microcredit’s greatest fans had previously not been able to   imagine trusting a bank to such customers let alone such staff! But then Ingrid’s 30 years of work makes her one of the most beloved white women in Africa and youth were not going to throw way the once in  lifetime opportunity to show that in a mobile network age they can build a nation into one of the most joyous economies anywhere,   Her bank demonstrates that in out mobile age, gangs are strongly connected peer to peer networks – who given a chance find it much more smart to be seen creating things rather than destroying them. Dreams of Kenya as a leader among African nations became reality at a moment of great crisis. In Kenya’s 2009 riots, youth destroyed one of the largest informal markets at the slum of Kibera. Ingrid’s network let the dust blow over for a few days and then approached the gang leader – would his team like to be given the credit to rebuild the market and entrepreneurially take care of it properly? ...  

Ingrid Munro & the Jamii Bora story of mentoring people out of poverty from Mamading Ceesay on Vimeo.

how kenya april 2010 saved the world and empowered obama's second half aka USAID 2.0

Kenya's microcreditsummit in april 201 is the most important event of 2010s Sustainability -and Global Village - Decade to date - like any 4 month old sub-brand of what youth of 2010s need to network, it needs huge help to fill some gaps or make sure these are interconnected by the next summit it relays to - please help us with the strongest possible devil's advicacy of what's (as yet) missing knowing all the while that we believe microcreditsummit's 13 year history is the greatest testament to human networking yet seen - rsvp info @worldcitizen.tv if you have other contenders to nominate (also at twitter)

as devils advocate these seem to be huge gaps - does anyone else agree? (by the way this is the opposite of sam's fault - it is because during the stage of putting this altogether he only has 2 full time people -how could we do that to him as well as cause conflict with the wish of young people around the world to understand the true system designs of end poverty? isnt this why the greatest millennium goals network is so easy for "the system design enemy" namely macroeconomics  to subvert? )

1 wangari maathai who lives down the road in nairobi

2 irrigation (eg kickstart)

3 taddy blecher (free university)

4 inviting whomever had most influence on moving usaid beyond aid to feel this summit is there's too

5 specific link with queen sofia's demand that spanish southern speaking hemisphere learns from jamii bora and best of youth-mobile-microcredit-slums etc and africa feels welcome to learn from spanish southern hemisphere

6 specific celebrations of micro and solar energy

7 end malaria as obama's number 1 foreign assistance pledge and his fatherland as ideal national lab to end malaria

8 representation of keynote speakers in applied areas of which health is an extraordinay omission given the 2 great bangladeshi microcredits origins in that area

9 ditto lack of reprsentation of childrens schooling including gandian models, vocations and microcredit

10 lack of many womens leadership networks ; is there a greater heroine in the world today than  ingrid munro and if so why dont the half of the world that are women celebrate her? why not jaq novogratz of acumen? why not co-presidential change agent like mary robinson who oddly partners sachs earth institute but not microfinace's ecovilage;   knowing how completely microcreditworld stages including JP Morgan and world bank have exhausted Ingrid's own health we cannot assume there will be another time to do this

11 african diaspora groups from big capitals

12 lack of media and stars who could - eg those involved with the millennium goal movie http://www.notimeleft.org/index.php www.thegreenchildren.org jeff skoll, larry brilliant, bono if he's serious, simon cowell who did an advert from kibera to fund 100 mn $ for macroaid, other producers of reality tv apprenticeships

13 paul krugman as princeton's 2nd most useful man after sam

14 lack of mit, google.org or others who could connect digital/internet for the poor

15 transparency international (gee eigen is supposed to be a world social entrepreneur with drayton, yunus and abed)

16 nick stern once famous uk gov editor of end african poverty 2005; turn world bank upside down; blaiir's clmat crisis whip; who made his name studying viilages in kenya and india; also british council (fall 09 british council meeting in bangladesh where british ministers alexander and miliband asked bangladeh to take strongests position ...)

I can see Bangladesh has some infrastructure difficulties in being host for microcreditsmmit but seriously can we not market enough inveetment partners in true microcredit around suggesting to sam that microcreditsummit 2012 could be held in dhaka -this should be done after the olympics but at a time of least weather risk (or in terms of internal politics is this still not smething bangladesh government would bless); if dhaka can't do it why not lucknow in india

... OPen Mal top Wangari Maathai - if you can help send open mail please contat us at info @worldcitizen.tv

Hello Mrs Maathai's Leaderhip Team

Is there a way I could make an appointment for a telephone call with Wangari Maathai or her chief of staff?

I want to ask if she knows about the microcreditsummit in kenya in april  www.microcreditsummit.org and why many sustainability and youth networks around the world back the aim of this summit to be the most practical ever held on sustainability leadership. In open system terms, our definition integrates community rising and transparency processes connecting exponentials of economics and ecology and youth's worldwide generation.

According to humanity champions like Queen Sofia of Spain, the summit is also about supporting inter-hemisphere knowledge connections with a local hero Ingrid Munro of http://jamiibora.org who has both innovated mobile banking for youth in slums and microfinanced the ecovilage Kaputei, as well as playing a grounded role in resolving the riots crisis - eg getting the rioters to rebuild the kibera marketplace quickly and take mutual responsibility for its future opportunities to inspire youth and job creation

 After 4 visits to Dhaka sponsred by my father http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html#Anchor-Changin-27687, I am also an acquaintance of Nobel Laureate Muhamaad Yunus and he has made it clear at his 69th birthday party last June that he sees this summit (the 13th microbanking one) as being at a crossroads . Dr Yunus aims to make global grameen the number 1 sustainability parrtnering brand through the 2010s. He is asking whether future microeconomics and millennium goal empowerment summits are best done anchored around banking for the poor or around each of the different sustainability crises that win-win-win social business sytsem models can be designed round - and which youth can be mobilised to network replications across borders when invited by relevant world class brand owners to innovate collaboration

I would like to suggest that this is both africa's and the microeconomics world's poorest most important and actionable meeting, and for all these reasons it would be huge if Wangaari Mathai could attend part or all of it in Nairobi. If one reads what little the Nobel judges write on their process I think it is no accident that they have largely reframed peace in terms of proactive sustainabbility community developers and that in this category Kenyans (or those who love Kenya) have already won 2 prizes and many would argue Ingrid as a contender for Kenya 3. 

I hope you don't mind me posing this question just in case it has not already been asked from the perspective of how urgent it is to many sustainability investment or end poverty networkers I know

sincerely

chris macrae

washington dc 301 881 1655

fans network http://www.jamiibora.net

www.worldclassbrands.tv www.developmentpartners.tv  

chris macrae dc 301 881 1655

www.jamiibora.net


can you tell me do you have connections with http://www.jamiibora.org/ or the coming microcreditsummit http://microcreditsummit.org/ of 2000 people in kenya in april 2010?

chris.macrae @yahoo.co.uk

for those who haven't heard JB's leader Ingrid Munro speak - this presentation at the world bank 2008 is a good first experience

http://www.microlinks.org/multimedia/Jamiibora/player.html

the last slide 63 is useful for americans and europeans to ponder

usa was built by europe's poorest entrepreneurs including 1 million of then 3 million swedes who emigrated between 1850-1900 -why should Kenyans or the poorest anywhere have any less job creating  capability if we credit their sustainability & web their youth communities with social business system designs?

.compass124.jpg
In a sensible CP3 world Yunus Olympics festival would build on
Whatever global grameen summit 2010 connects
Other micro up or collaboration partner events

As well as feed in to the milan 2015 whose mayor has already been booked by yunus as likely to be number millennium goals SB festival; .
.

Thanks for your Question and Answers

CP3
Q is rumor that mayor of milan convening social business milliennium goal festival 2015 official and if its not oficial is to right to talk about it
A well I can tell you my attitude about this though I would like feedback  what de bono calls pluses minuses and questionmarks

Yunus India Parliament Speech

Dreams are made out of impossibles.  We cannot reach the impossibles by using the analytical minds which are trained to deal with hard information which is currently available. These minds are fitted with flashing red lights to warn us about obstacles that we may face.  We’ll have to put our minds in a different mode when we think about our future.   We’ll have to dare to make bold leaps to make the impossibles possible.  As soon as one impossible becomes possible, it shakes up the structure and creates a domino effect, preparing the ground for making many other impossibles possible.

We'll have to believe in our wish-list if we hope to make it come true.  We'll have to create appropriate concepts, institutions, technologies, and policies to achieve our goals. The more impossible the goals look, the more exciting the task becomes.

Fortunately for us, we have entered into an age when dreams have the best chance to come true.  We must organise the present to allow an easy entry to the future of our dreams.  We must not let our past stand in the way.

11 meetings ago when I first met yunus, I volunteered to spread rumors of what’s possible http://rowp.tv/ ; for me many of the ideas over 5 to 7 years that micro people commit to turn out to be exponentially better than expected;

Bangladesh will create 100,000 solar energy jobs in the villages well before 2015 and already installs more solar units than the whole of the usa (against which those who cheered on yes we can a year ago could urgently be asking where are the maps towards 5 million green community jobs I recall obama pledging; why dont american state governors tour bangladesh until they get it; why do we pay them tax until they get it?) http://grameenenergy.com/ -how can we help with tours of dhaka is en route to every sustainability city is a question I ask every time I visit yunus in dhaka

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8130130.stm

Nations who send 36 social business delegates (thanks France) to see yunus at a time are at the leading edge of being in what adam smith would now call the collaborative advantage of nations –global grameen collaboration partner type 7 on the way my 12 year old and I map the world of global sustainability partnerships; if we can’t get nations above zero sum before she is 21 in an age spinning hyperconnectivity we are all toast

 and they need gossiping to get people to congregate around them and make them happen; this is part of the missing media we don’t have since most media is used to control not to collaborate; except on projects I am intimately involved with, I don’t mind getting (egg over my face) by  more rumors slightly wrong as long as some positive impetus happens to ones that turn out to be right because we all get behind them the earliest we cold contribute; moreover when I first started marketing the job of a marketer was to throw out lots and lots of concepts until one hit a positive nerve with all sides and that was the one people went with; this is an opposite but in my view thousand times better way to market than expensive advertising spots

2 at the end of the day spreading is there a loss to anyone apart from perhaps myself of spreading a positive rumor that doesn’t happen in exactly the place described; I suppose it depends partly on the style in which the rumor was initiated, so I take the point that I should infer a probability not a certainty to things

well what is near certain in my mind about millennium goal social business festivals

firstly if yunus is alive they will happen; gee its the biggest year on the calendar of the 2010s given his 15+ year support at centre of millennium goals; whether its going to happen in one city of be a bit like his race to poverty museums of every city be something where it doesn’t matter so much who does the best as long as many try

3 in this particular case the mayor of Milan made a video conference broadcast to the first 100 alumni of global grameen in which I understood she said it was happening as long as she had anything to do with Milan in 2015 : I guess I better see if I can you tube her announcement some time so we can review if I understood the message correctly

again in all of the above if I got the wrong end of the message - silly me; but come on each of us is targeted by ate least 1000 commercial messages a day; and the vast majority of those are in fact not good for us if we get the right end of the addictive message; so quite frankly if I can rebel against practices in my own profession of mass media, I will I will I will. In fact I have for at least a decade know and edited journals of how to do get positive global news out at next to no cost while big advertisers often spent billion dollars a campaign to get news out that isn’t good for you – do you know how much  worlds 100 biggest north western banks spent promising you they were as safe as houses –answer multiple trillions of dollars; do you know how many trillions of dollars pharma companies spend with the consequence that more than half of what they sell in many brands wasn’t needed by customers at all; we live in an age where media is quite capable of ending the sustainability of all of us unless we be the media of good news in any way we dare not to lurk

ok this message is written a bit like an oxford union debate where I am putting the motion on one side ; if someone wants me to circulate their voicing of an opposite motion please mail us

www.wholeplanet.tv   washington dc bureau               301 881 1655         301 881 1655



--- On Tue, 29/12/09, christopher macrae <chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

http://yunusolympics.com eg 1 clean energy; 2 end nurseless communities; 3 create billion jobs with new tech and youth; 4 turn education bottom up;
peter Your contribution to USAID virtual dialogue on this transparency-destructing area of globalisation distortion is a really big one; I was quite upset I couldnt get into yunus berlin day hosted with peter eigen ex head of transparency international but they called themselves some private berlin club
none of us have the experience of battling the world bank and other elites as regards africa that you have; and when for example you say in prior mails that the major systemic concern of the world bank these days is to fund the enormous pensions now owing to the bubble of staff who are retiring, it seems to me clear that government to government institutions are the greatest macroeconomic wastemakers blocking end poverty's race
YOUR FESTIVALPANEL
do we anywhere have 3 or 4 people who as a group share your argument and life experience context?; I am in so many system changes think-panels that I dont want to be in this one; it annoys me a hell of a lot that there is such system waste but there is no way I can argue it politely
I am making an assumption that londoners will be asked to form abouth 12 olympics sb festival panels and to make sure that all their ideas are animated, co-published, web-networked coming together in summer of 2012; this is both a long way off and not at all a long way off if all panel's ideas are to be worked out in a way that make sense to them and other panel members
we do not know if yunus will give us overall coordinating authority of such panels; if we ever do get the green light then this panel question will urgently need to be formed if a panel of this elite transparency is to be one of the things londoners sb festival animates
if  understand correctly yunus collaboration gameboard most matching peter is yunus call to start an asian union on a micro up model that is every way the opposite of the euro union or world bank or united nation models -see left column of http://collaboration11.blogspot.com/ for yunus india speech that majored on asian union
I dont know if anyone circulated or whom I could have circulated ultmately feels in the same area as I interpret peter to be; if so please communicate with him particularly
Peter we had that day when we both met senior guy from oxfam usa and guy who networks diversity interests through world trade sites- are these people to try and get on this panel
chris Macrae DC                301 881 1655         301 881 1655                301 881 1655         301 881 1655 http://transparency.tv/
ps if you look again at this picture
compass124.jpg
CP3 Take a time out for World's greatest Social Business summit at london Olymics 
what welcoming panels can Yunus friends  & London 1 2  assemble now - rsvp info @worldcitizen.tv
.Royal Hunt of Sun Panel
End Nurseless communities panel
21st C BBC War reporting from scottish missionary in Africa family tree lens
..
.
 Which is a first attempt to explore how collaboration partnering is the biggest competitive advantage of all in a network age then I conclude what will happen isn’t really down to the efforts of the first 100 big partners yunus signs but how we the people cheer them on; if yunus is known to say that the power is actually with the poor, then most definitely the power of global media is with every citizen; do we let it control us or do we celebrate dreams we will turn into realities – you have to choose but I think I know which way yunus hopes you will choose (but do please understand if I am wrong mea culpa, its not the fault of any friend of mine; I assume to my last breadth that one learns by making lots and lots of mistakes provided always they  were intended in good faith; again maybe that epitaph applies particularly to my profession people of media people, and if most media people disagree with that then in my pinion they have lost the hippocratic oath that media professionals ought live by)

7 Wonders of Yes We Can's WholePlanet Networking 1 2

Kenya's Jamii Bora is a top 7 destination of MicroLeadersQuest student clubs across America interested in connecting Obama Yes We Can, Millennium Goal networks, community building and microentrepreneurs. These are some reasons for benchmarking Jamii Bora - please mail info@worldcitizen.tv others

Jamii Bora, Kenya.Safe Banking -uses mobile technology to be one of lowest costs to operate deposit account in world Most economical health insuranceBusiness School for Any Hard Working PersonWorld's Most Loved Housing EstateComing soon WholeFoods?Unitus Coffee Fair Trade

 Inauguration week 2 of Yes We Can Presidency see US visits from world leaders of ending poverty

Ingrid Munro, Founder, Jamii Bora, Kenya

.Munro, at JP Morgan Manhattan HQ, 26 January 2009 (week 2 of Yes We Can Inauguration)

 

Presentation by Ingrid Munro, founder of Jamii Bora in Kenya.  Munro is a revolutionary social entrepreneur, changing the microfinance landscape in ways that shatter conventional wisdom and open an array of new possibilities for empowering the very poor.  With some 200,000 members and a staff consisting solely of former clients, Jamii Bora has successfully made loans to people who are now former beggars, prostitutes and thieves; developed a home-grown health insurance program serving more than 300,000 people, and is building a new town of 2,000 houses and 3,000 work spaces.  As Munro says, “Every person’s dream is to move out of the slums, not patch up the slums.” 

Wednesday, January 28, 20099:00-10:00 a.m.The World Bank (Main Complex), Washington DC


 New York January 26 : Ingrid Munro & Muhammad Yunus present humanity's greatest news of the millennium - Hosted by JP Morgan 383 Lexington Avenue

Greatest Happenings of our generation

info@worldcitizen.tv is interested in hearing your nominations of the greatest happenings of the computing generation 1980-2025. Early on our economics editor nailed his search to ending poverty - not just because it was the right thing to do but because with death of distance's ever more connected age gaps in incomes and expectations of rich and poor nations would become mankind's greatest risk to species sustainability

Our top 3 nominations for ending poverty are all interconnecting:

1 The Bangladeshi Microcredit Revolution which begun around Muhammad Yunus with the formal opening of Grameen village bank in 1983

2 The emergence of Jamii Bora- Africa's leading role model for microcredit which emerged in Kenya in the late 1990s

3 The election of Kenyan-American Barrack Obama whose mother was one of the pioneers of microcredit in 1980s Indonesia and womens world banking.

.

>
CHANGE is
HERE

& HERE
& Jamii Bora (Kenya)

&

This web logs Jamii Bora's progress. In common with all the world's deepest microcredits, Jamii Bora is about empowering every community to rise sustainability out of poverty as well as the greatest collaboration maps -part of how rising microcredit replicate what works as soon as they find a solution to a life critical service

Jamii Bora is also different from Bangladeshi microcredit in that it empowers youth and orphans from Kenya's slums  to become microentrepreneurs whereas diagnosis of Poverty's challenge in Bangladesh focused around women vilagers. This means that many of the innovation foci of  Jamii Bora are new to the world and can be replicated in paralel programs. For the first time, Africa offers its own world class sustainability models. One which proves network loyalty of banking members can work in urban districts as well as rural ones. One which has been born since the mobile empowering age. This makes JB's operations one of the lowest costs per bank deposit in the world

The macroeconomics rule over Americans in the 00s has compounded a sadly slow focus on millennium goals. But here's the chance to catch up. See what impossible becomes possible solutions can be test marketed in partnership with Jamii Bora but with ten view to replicating successes to analogous communities in need across the continent. The most specific of Obama's pledges to bend the curve back to millennium goals involved ending death by malaria by 2015. We'll bet a few dollars with anyone that if that's going to happen then Kenya will be the first test country supported by all the knowledge circulation that a peoples community network of jamii Bora's courageous brilliance can help all  rejoice YES WE CAN

Archive Older

Thursday, April 15, 2010

a year in preparing kenya microcreditsummit and next 18 months of trying to replicate JB everywhere
Countdown to sustainabilty world's greatest networking event - MICROCREDITSUMMIT
.May 09 Sam and Ingrid fly to Madrid to get Queen Sofia's support for exchanges between Africa and Spain - QS also confirms Madrid will host world mcs 2011.June09 colombia holds microcreditsummit- at least 50 american undergraduates pledge to try to get to kenya mcs ; 69th yunus birthday dialogue hosted in Dhaka with http://yunusforum.net  confirmation of 5000 youth ambassador network. Google.org & Grameen.S and .F launch text for the poor in Uganda.July09 Grameen Creative Lab travels with Yunus to Mandela birthday talk and launches Joy of Life campaign to run to millennium goals 2015 inviting every world cup sporting event including FIFA's in South Africa to co-brand in the greatest cause for human cenebration on the planet - the race to end poverty. BRAC to lead a $15 million initiative to rebuild war-torn communities in West Africa: Liberia and Sierra Leone.August 09 Obama awards Yunus and oher change agents presidential medal of honor- sam d-h organises dozen plus country publication of op-ed inviting Obama to lead all Yes We Can networks to Kenya
..BRAC confirms best MCS- aug09 -agreement signed in islamabad between sam d-h and fazle abed.Jamii Bora confirms best MCS May09 Agreement between ngrid Munro & sam d-h .
..Grameen confirms best MCS - aug09  agreement between sam d-h and Muhammad Yunus.Other confirmations:.
....
While Obama is president we are happy to feature any community building solutions that Kenyans might want to try out - we can put you in touch with those posted but don't have the expertise to make local judgements. However at our web http://jamibora.net we celebrate every solution that Africa's most amazing youth and women's microcredit is achieving. Let's hope the whole world of end poverty networkers colaborates with the amazing methods that Kenya's microentrepreneurs are communally identifying world class examples of.

left- At World Health Congress April 2009, Dr Eddy Agbo of fyodorbio.com meets Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and is congratulated on his efforts in devloping a urine-based test of malaria which can empower healthcare for the poorest

15 April 2009 - NBC News
Providing quality health care can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. About 40 companies from around the globe gathered at the 6th Annual World Health Care Congress to demonstrate how "spare parts" and other low-cost solutions can improve health and save lives. http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1102442935&play=1

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Hi All,
I am in Pakistan at the moment.  I've written an op-ed you can pitch titled A Champion of Yes We Can angled on the Presidential Medal of Freedom that President Obama will give to Muhammad Yunus and 15 others on August 12th.  If you read it and love it, please offer it to your op-ed editor so long as your paper wouldn't require a national exclusive (e.g. not the LA Times or NY Times).  Please let me know if you'll pitch it. It's fine if you don't.  
Thanks so much,
Sam
c 202-390-0012
Skype: samdharris2015

A Champion of Yes We Can

When President Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to 16 distinguished American and international “agents of change” at a White House ceremony on August 12th one of the honorees will link Mr. Obama to both his past and to the future he is so committed to creating.  Among the 16 leaders who will receive America’s highest civilian honor is Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which makes tiny loans for self-employment to some of the poorest people in that country.  Prof. Yunus is also one of the world’s most effective champions of the “yes we can” spirit.

Decades ago the economics professor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate described his search for new bank clients as a process of “looking for the most timid.”  He wasn’t looking for the villagers who were the first to step forward to ask for a micro-loan starting at less than $10, he was looking for those who were last to come forward and who trusted their abilities the least.  To those villagers he and his staff would say, “Yes you can.”

Thirty-three years later nearly 8 million members of Grameen Bank (a total of 40 million when you count their family members) are saying “yes we can” to the whole world.  Since its inception Grameen Bank has lent more than $8 billion to the poor in Bangladesh.

So how does one start an enterprise that reaches nearly 40 million people in one’s own country and touches the lives of tens of millions more in replications around the world?  Dr. Yunus had his own “yes we can” moment as a young economics professor who faced an agonizing famine that left him doubting his value as a teacher and as a human being.

He was so shaken by the sight of people dying of starvation that when he set foot into Jobra, the village next to his campus, all he wanted to do was to see if he could be of use to one person for one day—not 40 million—just one.  It was in that village that he met a stool maker who horrified him when she explained that she earned only two cents a day for her beautiful craftsmanship.  With no money to buy the bamboo she needed, Sufia Khatun was forced to borrow from a money-lender who demanded that she sell her finished stools back to him at a price he set—a price so low that she made only two cents a day profit.

When he asked whether she could earn more if she was freed from the moneylender, she told him, “Yes I can.”  Professor Yunus had a student to look for other villagers who were in the same dilemma.  The student found 42 people who needed a grand total of $27 to pay-off the moneylender, buy their raw materials, and sell their wares to the highest bidder.  That’s right; all they needed was an average of 68 cents each.   With her loan of less than $1 the stool-maker’s profits soared from two cents a day to $1.25 a day. 

Now Prof. Yunus has set his sights on titans of business and industry with his social business concept and the chairmen of Dannone, Intel, and BASF are beating a “yes we can” path to his door to create new non-profit/non-loss businesses that have as their sole goal improving people’s lives.  The corporations can recover their initial investments in the social businesses, but after that, all profits are plowed back into these new companies.  They include a joint venture with Dannone producing nutritionally fortified yogurt for malnourished villagers, another with BASF producing chemically treated bed-nets to protect people from mosquitos carrying malaria, and still another with Intel bringing information technology solutions to rural villages. 

When the US President shakes the hand of the Bangladeshi micro-banker at the White House ceremony this week, Mr. Obama will be touching his own past and the microfinance work his mother did in Indonesia.  And when Professor Yunus opens the Microcredit Summit next April in Nairobi, Kenya, the micro-banker from Bangladesh will launch the next phase of microfinance in the birthplace of Mr. Obama’s father and throughout the continent. 

President Obama should accompany Muhammad Yunus to that Summit in Kenya to join in the micro-banker’s most inspiring appeal—a daring call to put poverty in the museums where it belongs.

Yes we can!

[728 words]

Sam Daley-Harris is Founder of the Microcredit Summit Campaign which seeks to reach 175 million poorest families with microcredit www.microcreditsummit.org and of RESULTS which seeks to create the political will to end poverty www.results.org.

Sam Daley-Harris, Founder

RESULTS and Microcredit Summit Campaign

750 First Street, NW, Suite 1040

Washington, DC 20002

C 202-390-0012

9:43 am edt 


Archive Older

2008 Thank Goodness For Cool Heads at JB 
.Kenya had months of post-election violence in 2008, and it also had some success stories about conflict resolution. I've written in an earlier blog about Jamii Bora Trust in Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum, perhaps one of the largest in Africa. Here's a short video which shows how Jamii Bora's branch manager for Kibera, Andrew Otieno, got youths who looted and burned Toi Market to rebuild it, then rebuild their lives through getting training and loans from Jamii Bora.
The sound quality is poor, so look out for these points:
  • a member talking about how she'll use her loan in her catering business
  • Andrew about how he increased the membership at Kibera branch from 7k to 50k from Jan. to Nov 08
  • John, the ex-Rebel Leader, about how they looted, then burned the market
  • John and Bernard about how they couldn't believe that Jamii Bora would give them a chance after they had destroyed the market
  • John and Bernard about their box-making business and how they now have a stake in society

A miracle brought about by the 'whole community' approach at Jamii Bora Trust!

 

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entry log from meeting 2 Ingrid Munro 28 Januray, world bank washington dc
I.M.- at my house I have a security guard in the evening; and intermittently he became one of our larger borrowers; and we didnt know quite what he did but since he always repaid we trusted him; then I found out that once every 4 months he goes back to his homeplace which is in the far north of kenya on the border of ethiopia; and gets his wife to run a small microcredit up there; the people in that region have just come down to nairobi asking why they cant have a formal brach of jamii bora and I had to say I didnt even know that they had an informal one - but of course they can use our mobile technology and we can connect fully all our social business franchise replications

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