Microfinance Practice: Re: [MFP] Businesses Behaving Badly: The Troubling Parallels Between Microfinance and Facebook

Hi Christopher,

I had the privilege of working with Sir Abed when BRAC was considering setting up BRAC Bank in the 1990s. Every BRAC undertaking is carried out with consummate skill and a commitment to relevancy and simplicity and learning and building every undertaking to scale. I was particularly impressed with the rural schools, and, like you, the health programs. I was also impressed with the chicken raising and marketing operations with each phase of the process broken out into linked businesses at a scale that made sense for illiterate or barely literate women.

I'd be curious to learn what you have come up in your work with BRAC. Yunus has accomplished a lot, but I'm more impressed with BRAC and its efforts. With that said, as far as I could determine, BRAC copied the Grameen microfinance model which, to me at least, is top down and paternalistic. The saving group movement largely developed in Africa has much to offer to BRAC and Grameen with its focus on local control and savings.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: christopher macrae chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com>
To: microfinancepractice@yahoogroups.com <microfinancepractice@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Aug 19, 2020 11:18 am
Subject: [MFP] Businesses Behaving Badly: The Troubling Parallels Between Microfinance and Facebook

i visited bangladesh 15 times between 2007 and 2019 to interview 2 people muhammad yunus and sir fazle abed

a lot of things happened- one day i was locked in to grameen bank as thousands of trouble makers surrounded the complex- all part of the prime ministers forfeiture from yunus of the bank

if i have an expertise it is the branding of partnerships which i have published on since 1990- greenwashing is the sworn enemy of the few media experts my family, friends and i aim to linkin

over time i concluded fazle abed took very great care in choosing and sustaining partnerships -- whereas yunus had become the person american do gooders- including its media both mass and huh-social- nominated for nobel prizes, congressional and presidential models;

i see yunus as someone who these days generates hundreds of concepts but i cant find any way of learning what i want to know about community grounded lives matter from them; as you likely all know sir fazle died december 2019- so the last 3 years since his 80th birthday party which i was privileged to be at - have become a study of which his partners took his legacy wish to heart- uniting university curriculum which start round goals achieved eg raising village life expectancy from low 40s to mid 60s- for fazle abed linking in superb microhealth programs came before there was ever a need to design financial services for villagers running microfranchises- take one case for example- a quarter of kids used to die of diarrhea both in bangladesh and south china villages - the east pakistan cholera lab invented oral rehydration but did not know how to share this knowhow with illiterate villagers- together fazle and barefoot chinese medics worked out how to visit and train every village mother; it was one of those exponential accelerating programs; while it took almost a decade 78-88 to complete, once jim grant from a medical family and himself born in china saw it, he made it the main topic unicef briefed national leaders on - later grant asked fazle abed is there anything i can do for you; fazle said would you go ask my country's president to immunise the country's children; so grant not only did that but challenged the president - if you get 70% inoculation done we will celebrate your achievement in new york; the president then said the government will take on immunizing half of children if you will fundraise brac to do the other half- in this way fazle made sure enough people in government always had his back even though the difference needed in bottom up transparency and top-down navigation of the global aid market is night and day- after all before he turned to ceo of poverty alleviation sir fazle was regional ceo for royal dutch shell - he was the continuous fabric of nation development but never claimed any such thing- 50 years of sustaining a nation brand id is something american's next generations needed too but sadly didnt get, yet

20 years after james grant and fazle abed first partnered, when sir fazle opened brac university the main r&d college was branded james grant public school of health- by this time both soros and jim kim wanted to understand brac's tuberculosis program; they found out that brac selected people who had survived the disease to do the last mile service work of serving tb patients; by 2005 gates had heard of this from kim

this is just an example- fazle was relentless but modest; he used to say its the women who do the hard work; i try to find people whose life mission has a solution i can help them sustainably educate as well as finance and the women can build livelihoods and our rural nation around

when it comes to the value chain of brac finance there are about 8 brac pioneered models that fit together from the poorest woman villager to economical remittance banking coordinated out of brac international in netherlands- please note by bangladeshi law a bangladesh organisation cant fundraise to help end poverty intrernationally, so it took every royal dutch shell ang global accounting friendship to design a fit international partnership office out of the hague

-there is no point eg in studying brac microfinance without seeing integration of the solution microfranchises it redesigns food security around- nor without the ultra graduation program nor without people who initially brought village phones to yunus all gravitating over a 15 year period to the partnerships which now form http://www.bkash.com cashless banking for the unbanked

mathematically, the microeconomics system interfacing truth: if you want sdgs to progress - dont limit yourself to advocating or studying replicable cases separately or at points in time- if sdgs are real coalitions are needed to leap ahead of each new tech advance not to get ipo'd when a previously manual network cant separately afford to lead the technology

can 30 university colleges around the world do justice to what could be learnt from 50 years of sir fazle abed's service ; the question is in my mind the same for anyone with 50 years worth learning from - as a smithian scot i am biassed i like david attenborough as the only person i can see who has kept tv honest; if you have a nomination of someone whose purpose has relentlessly gravitated 50 years of deep progress that's a sub-curriculum vitae -todays parents and youth - need one global university of poverty -now in these 2020s to zoom around the younger half of the world uniting the dreamers and the doers

there is in my 15 visits to dhaka of notetaking no such thing as trustworthy microfinance without microhealth and microeducation- when my father norman macrae the end poverty east-west sub-editor of the economist died, japan who had awarded dad their highest international honor asked its embassy in dhaka to stage 2 roundtables chaired by fazle abed inviting 50 of bangladesh's servant leaders to listen to the last 7 year challenge he felt well enough to see happen http://www.bkash.com and his legacy hope that somehow more and more colleges would unite in a coalition of girls sdg university integrated around economics designed from the bottom up

thats a struggle with covid starting almost the day sir fazle died but it is also why i personally have no interest in being bullied by politicians or financiers unless they can pass an iq test on bottom up health services- america needs whatever you choose to call fazle abed knowhow more than ever - just my 5 cents worth- do any of you know the vice chancellor sir fazle headhunted as the last leadership choice he personally made

chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

http://www..fazleabed.com coming soon 5 one-hour transcripts - a life in an hour with fazle abed

On Wednesday, 19 August 2020, 01:53:00 GMT-4, hugh@vsla...net [MicrofinancePractice] <microfinancepractice@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Chuck.

When I first got in to microfinance, under your leadership in the early 1990s, it was a big surprise to learn that 45% of economically active Americans (103.99 million) bank through credit unions, where they are de facto shareholders and benefit from profit sharing. While not universal, he drift of many MFIs to a profit-maximising model, benefitting a closed group of insiders, is a corrupt outcome to which regulators have been slow to react. The last page of Animal Farm comes to mind. Thanks for your persistence.

Hugh

From: MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 18 August 2020 13:02
To: MFP <microfinancepractice@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [MFP] Businesses Behaving Badly: The Troubling Parallels Between Microfinance and Facebook

Six weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on MFP about how microfinance and Facebook both became vehicles for activity that violated their original intents. Nextbillion has now posted an edited version of my post. Here is their intro paragraph and a link to the article:

Chuck Waterfield left microfinance five years ago, after working in the sector for three decades. He stopped using Facebook three years ago, after using the platform for about 10 years. As he explains, the troubling parallels between the two drove his decision to leave both. He explores how their business models have grown increasingly problematic over time – and why, without external intervention, things are likely to get worse.

https://nextbillion.net/businesses-microfinance-and-facebook/

Regards,

Chuck Waterfield