Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Grameen Intership, summer 2006




The air was hot and humid. It was just July 9th, 9:30am and I already felt like I were baking in a suana. I searched the crowd of unfamiliar faces at the lobby of the 20 storey Grameen Building. The old friend from the U.S finally showed up. We took the elevator straight to the 8th floor.

Orientation

After a brisk introduction to the interns of the day at a large "intern-seasoned" table, we were ushered into a media room to watch a few videos to get a crash course of Grameen. We were assigned a cordinator and were asked to pencil down a few personal objectives of our internship. (note to future interns: keep this list short and sweet. Just say you are there to learn about Grameen methodology. Boy, did I get into trouble on the first day for complex objectives!)

At the "table" I met Remi Meunier, Philippine Janssens and Kivanc Camber. The old friend aka as Hamidur Rashid and I decided to dive into an overnight field trip out of Dhaka that very day, since there were going to be strikes the next day and we really didn't want to get stuck in Dhaka. We were really impressed by how effecient the cordinators and supervisors were in arranging a trip for us in 2 hours.

Since Hamid was living outside Dhaka and wasn't quite prepared to go on a trip that very day, we had to go shopping for sandals, t-shirts and Bangladeshi pajamas to serve as pants in less than an hour! We rushed back to the office and were chaperoned by our cordinator to a village called Manikgonj, an hours and a half away from Dhaka.

When in doubt, hand it over to Dr. Yunus


After miserable attempts of the Govt. to manage the estate of 800 ponds by cultivating fish, they turned it over to Dr. Yunus. Joysagor is located in North Bengal. It is the headquaters of one of Grameen's thriving sister for-profit organizations called the Fisheries and Livestock Project.


This peaceful estate is one of the many examples of creative "tweaking" of the Grameen micro-credit model to incorporate borrowing of money to cultivate seafood and paying back in fish if needed.



Grameen also does an excellent job of connecting the borrowers to customers. E.g. they collect 2000 liters of milk everyday from the livestock of the borrowers. Its is mainly sold to Milk Vita which is one of the leading ice cream producers of the country.

Grameen Shakti (Solar Energy)



They have doubled their installations from 1500 to 3000 a month! Retail stores and tailor shops as these can stay opne longer for business. This has doubled the revenues of the entrepreneurs and helped them become more competitive in their industry.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit



This Grameen borrower had loans from ASA, BRAC and Grameen. She was comfortable juggling all three loans and optimized the resources by delegating businesses to extended family members. Giving loans to the women inevitably raised her status in her family and drastically improved her self esteem. I was amazed at the social revolution that has changed the cultural landscape of the people in the villages.

Grameen Shikkha (Education program)


In order to reduce the drop out rate of students from public schools, Grameen uses the meeting centers as preschools for children ages 3 to 5. The children were happy and nutured in this positive learning environment and thus taught to be accustomed to the discipline ot attending school.

Our favorite moments



We ate the best mangoes at the banks of the Ganges in North Bengal, gazed at the milky way and listened to the folk songs of the fishermen in the late hours of the night.
Some of us had a royal treat of being whisked away by the gracious elephants of the village. This is in Sylhet where we had traveled as private guests of the Finance Minister. He treated us to food that were from his gardens and ponds. He had Grameen Solar panels on his bungalows.




Amee was trained in Bharathnatam since she was 6 years old. We had a private performance at my sister in law's, Sadaf Siddiqi.




The boys enjoying the performance "Nawabi" style.

Present day challenges of Grameen borrowers



Grameen has successfully adopted changes to meet the customized needs of their borrowers over the year, like evolving into the Grameen II business model of flex-loan payments.

Being a product of an Entrpreneurship business school, I constantly noticed the lack of diversity in picking the "right" opportunities among the borrowers. Yes, I agree, they are doing much better that they were before and have had an improvement in their quality of life. They even adopt multiple business strategies like farming for 3 months, rickhaws for 7 months and their sewing business for 2 months. Don't quote me on the exact line up of businesses.

However, 70% of the borrowers seem to have the same selection of cyclical businesses. Thats what boggled my mind. Why did the whole town trade cows? And why did they pick the same cyclical businesses? We tried to take some guys out to lunch to show our gratitude for their warmth and hospitality, but the whole village didn't have a single restaurant!

This is the same "disconnect" we observed with all the NGOs operating in Bangladesh. People were not aligning their "unique" skills, passions and a community need which would allow them to pick the "right" opportunity and have less competition if any at all and serve the community better. That way they would get a higher return for the same investment and effort.

In the mind of the borrowers




I had asked them why they continued to borrow in spite of having a descent stash of savings. They were clearly in a position to fund their own ventures. I asked if they felt trapped, if they wanted to get out, if they got tired of paying back loans. They smiled and asked,"what do you do when you start a business? Borrow money, right? And what do you do when you want to expand or start a bigger business? Borrow more money, right? Well, thats the choice we are making. We are choosing to start bigger and bigger businesses. Why would we feel trapped? Esp. with the flex- program they have now. Of course, our team members help out and hold each one of us accountable if we can't pay our installments for the week. But, we are always work something out with the bank.

Connecting with people


Hira and Ridoi(Diamonds and Hearts)
We felt the hospitality of the Bangladeshi people everywhere we went. In Madappur, an entourage ot 8 young chaps entertained us for 3 hours on a spectacular boat ride in full moon light.

Sadaf & Kamel



Their pad was one of our hangout joints. Sadaf's always has great food, live music, and even chinese tea ceremonies.




Philippine and the village children

Philippine was always surrounded by children. She won their hearts with pictures and candy!



Hub nubbing with the Rich and Famous


Hamid was making connections round the clock, from being the Finance Minister's private guest for a weekend to spending quality time with the High Commissioner's Chinese dog.

Oh! Did we eat!



At local tea shops, at Aaref's, at the Fisheries, in Kaptai and at my 2 mom's were among a few places were the food was to die for!



Building long term relationships


Field Trip

The branch manager was amazingly warm, caring and well read. This was just the beginning of Grameen hospitality. My greatest take away for the summer was that, business is all about building relationships, its about caring for people. Its never about the money or a transaction. We interns observed time and time again that the borrowers didn't care about the declining 20% interest rates, they never bothered to compare rates or benifits with other NGOs operating in the community like ASA or BRAC. They were proud to be Grameen borrowers, preferred to do business on Grameen loans even if they had savings. They claimed that they were more productive by being on a short Grameen leash of making weekly payments. At the end of the day, they all loved being part of a community, the Grameen community. Its a torch of hope that they passed down from generation to generation.