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.