From a Q&A session in The New York Times (September 21, 2005):

Q. How do you feel about micro-loans and micro-enterprise as a tool to end world poverty -- by helping people help themselves to self-sufficiency?
- Barry Stevens, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Costa Rica

A. I met Professor Microcredit himself last week to discuss this. A very gracious, very great man: Mohammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. You know that mantra, "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime"? It's missing something: microfinance is the fishing rod, the boat, the net, etc. Cash and dignity, side by side. Part of Professor Yunus's brilliance was to lend the money to women, who are much more reliable at paying back loans. Maybe the mantra should be: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Give a woman microcredit, she, her husband, her children and her extended family will eat for a lifetime."

To get long-term self-sufficiency, macro trade reform is kind of the other side of the coin to micro-grassroots empowerment. Different ways of getting to the same thing, but I think you need both.

The thing with politicized rockstars is that they (unwittingly?) make the job of other seemingly faceless poverty activists so much easier. And now thanks to this ubiquitous frontman of U2, Microcredit can be made a buzz word, and Muhammad Yunus a household name.

It's interesting to note that underprivileged women are viewed as the more reliable beneficiaries of these small loans. As a matter of equal opportunity, I'm not complaining. But what's trust got to do with gender, other than, say, meddling husbands who think the power of decision-making rests upon them, even if the money is actually made out to their wives...?

And what about single women who don't have families? Or women who have managed to leave their abusive spouses and start over on their own? Bono's quote gives us the impression that women who are given microcredit are always in service of their families. (Or are they?)

While microcredit seeks to empower women by enabling them to put up small businesses as a way of overcoming their respective situations of poverty, it isn't without its set of problems. Is credit merely another word for debt, rather than a basic human right? Are these women working harder than they should, yet are still not reaping the rewards come payback time?

Labels: economics, finance, livelihood, media