she would give her life to preserve that kind of trust

(Dr. Muhammad Yunus and myself, bright and early this morning... please do not reproduce without permission)

I dragged myself out of bed at 6 am to attend a small lecture and meet-&-greet with Muhammad Yunus this morning. My academic background is in both biomedical engineering and development economics, and Dr. Yunus is a huge force in poverty eradication. The Grameen Bank is wildly successful, and incredibly simple. He spoke for a little more than an hour, off the cuff, and had some really great stories to tell. One of the most vivid, though, was about Grameen’s vision of having 50% of its borrowers be female.

When they first started in the 1970s, Yunus and his students went to the villages themselves. He would wait outside under a tree and his female students would go inside and talk to the village women. When the students had a question, they would come outside, discuss with Dr. Yunus, and go back inside to the women. For years, the women were so reluctant to borrow money. They heard things like, “My husband deals with the money.” and “I’ve never even held money in my hands.” and “I don’t know what a bank is.”

Imagine – how do you explain to an illiterate village woman who has never held money, what a bank is?

Furthermore, how do you explain this to a woman who, all her life, has apologized for the fact that she was born a woman? She has been called a drain on her family, she has never gone to school, and she is expected to manage a household with whatever she is given by her husband. Her life is not her own doing. This is the culture, the history, the circumstance that surrounds her life. How do you peel back the layers of fear and convince her to take a chance… on herself?

It took six years of convincing women like this for the Grameen Bank to achieve its 50/50 goal. That is, in the grand scheme of things, a very short time, but imagine giving six years of your life to walk around villages and convince women to build a better future for themselves and their families. That is no small investment. Yunus, when reflecting on the achievement, said this:

“A woman comes to the bank after days, weeks of pondering. Can she do this? What if she fails? Her family will forever hold her responsible, blame her for any mistakes. But she knows she wants a better life for her children. So she takes this sum of money - $30, $40, $45. It’s a larger sum than she’s ever seen. For some, it’s the first time she’s ever held money in the first place. That woman is reduced to tears by the amount of trust that someone has placed in her. And she would give her life to preserve that kind of trust.

Repeat that story 8 million times, and you will understand what Grameen Bank is all about."

A call to those of us who have been lucky enough to “win the lottery of birth” - It is possible to eradicate extreme poverty in our time. It is possible to improve healthcare in the developing world. It is possible to stamp out disease, to ease suffering, to empower women. All of these things are achievable. They require us, though, to take chances. To peel back layers of fear. It’s not about making money. The Grameen Bank is profitable. It is not charity. It is a business. But the goal is not to win the game of business – it’s to solve the problems in people's lives.

A woman came back into the Grameen Bank several years after she repaid her loan. She had built a successful enterprise in her village, and had managed to send all of her children to school. That particular day, Dr. Yunus was in the bank, and she came by with her now-grown daughter. This woman could have asked her daughter to stay at home and help with the business while her sons went to school, could have pulled her child out of school because she needed the help. But she didn’t. Her daughter was now a practicing doctor in a city in Bangladesh. These two women stood side by side. They looked the exact same, except the difference in age. And while he was talking to them, he couldn’t help but think – one woman, illiterate, uneducated, took a chance and made some sacrifices. The other woman became the product of those chances and sacrifices, and was now given the chance to save other peoples' lives. Her mother could have done everything that her daughter got to do, if only society had given her the same chance.