I recently read Banker to the Poor after it showed up in our sidebar. I found it so facinating that I stayed up late and finished it in one sitting.. It’s the autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, a professor of Economics who, in 1976, started making small loans to provide capital to the poor in Bangladesh. He started the Grameen Bank, which has now loaned more than US $5 billion to those who can’t get traditional bank loans. The Grameen Bank provides no-capital loans to the poorest of the poor. They have an almost perfect repayment rate, and 97% of their borrowers are women. The bank is structured so that 90% of the bank is owned by its borrowers. Grameen Bank aims for poverty elimination by making credit a human right. Prof Yunus’ dedication to fighing poverty is inspiring. He won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

In addition to the Grameen Bank, there are now many Grameen enterprises, including Grameen Energy and Grameen Telecom, which are also focused on helping the poor of rural Bangladesh. In 1997, the Grameen Foundation was formed to help support Microfinance institutions around the world. Today, peliom pointed me to Mifos, an open source account management system developed by the Foundation. They have a SourceForge project, and they are also hiring a program manager and an intern. If you are Java type interested in finance, you should check them out!

I became interested in microfinance after reading May’s post about Kiva. Kiva is looking for volunteers to help with web development. It would be great if Kiva provided traditional bank accounts similar to ING Direct or other online-only banks, where the account funds were used for funding microfinance loans. I’m sure a lot of people would use such a bank, even if the account earned no interest.

Filed under: books, inspiration · 3 Comments