“The billboards and signs in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, New York, reflect dozens of languages, cultures, and nationalities. It’s an immigrant community of rich diversity, but also plenty of poverty. And there’s a store for that too: an American version of Bangladesh’s famous Grameen Bank.
“No fancy lobby here – there aren’t even enough chairs. But from this and five other cramped quarters in Queens and as far away as Oakland, California, Grameen America disburses dozens of micro-business loans each day – most for around $1500, all of them to women. It is the brainchild of US-trained economist Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for success with microlending in his native Bangladesh. He wanted to prove the concept could work in a developed country. Using foundation grants and borrowing commercially under a federal community reinvestment law, Grameen America began in 2008 – to wary customer reception.”
One of this weekend’s stories on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, a weekly PBS television show, examined Grameen America’s microloan initiative and a Minnesota initiative, MicroGrants, that also strives to helps finance the dreams and opportunities of low-income people with the potential to grow their way to self-sufficiency.
To access a video presentation of this segment (with a transcript of the interviews), please visit:
Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly: Microloans and Microgrants (31 AUG 12)
Background information:
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment