Source: Next Billion.net
September 22, 2011
By Sadna Samaranayake
'This week, I had the rare opportunity to ask Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, what he would do differently if he could rewind the clock 30 years and "re-design" microcredit. Given the past year of controversies in microcredit, (covered here) and the forum where we met - Change Model, a workshop on innovating development approaches – it seemed appropriate to ask the father of microcredit how the sector could have been engineered differently, with hindsight. His resolute response: "I would not let the profit-makers be part of the movement. We didn't screen right from the very beginning. We let them grow with it and they became very aggressive."
It's a sentiment echoed in his opinion piece in the NY Times earlier this year, where he writes, "The community needs to reaffirm the original definition of microcredit, abandon commercialization and turn back to serving the poor." He went on to share that he believed clearer distinction from the get-go about the social goals of microcredit - and more explicit articulation of microcredit as an avenue for poverty alleviation, as opposed to commercial gain – might have precluded some of the more commercial (and ultimately controversial) players from self-identifying with the movement.'
It's a sentiment echoed in his opinion piece in the NY Times earlier this year, where he writes, "The community needs to reaffirm the original definition of microcredit, abandon commercialization and turn back to serving the poor." He went on to share that he believed clearer distinction from the get-go about the social goals of microcredit - and more explicit articulation of microcredit as an avenue for poverty alleviation, as opposed to commercial gain – might have precluded some of the more commercial (and ultimately controversial) players from self-identifying with the movement.'
