Grameen Foundation Articles

Working Her Way Out of Poverty - Click To Read Article
Kishwar's story - Pakistan

Victory of a Village Vase Vendor - Click To Read Article
Muazzam Jan’s house is filled with dozens of beautiful vases and other decorations. Her oldest son’s backpack sits nearby, ready for him to go to school along with her two other school-age children; her youngest will soon join them. Muazzam now runs a successful business in partnership with her husband. But not too recently, Muazzam’s life looked very different.

Uganda Success Stories - Click To Read Article
Women building better lives with Village Phone

Social Stock Market - Click To Read Article
How do we encourage the creation of SBEs? What are the steps that we need to take to facilitate the SBEs to take up bigger and bigger chunks of market share?

Social Business Entrepreneurs Can Play a Big Role in the Market - Click To Read Article
Suppose we postulate a world with two kinds of people, both one-dimensional, but having different objectives. One type is the existing type, i.e. profit maximizing type. The second type is a new type, those who are not interested in profit-maximization.

Rebuilding Through Social Enterpreneurship - Click To Read Article
On television in Bangladesh, I watched with great sadness the horrors Katrina unleashed on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I was so tempted to be there to participate in post-disaster activities, as we have so much experience with these kinds of disasters. But I knew my American friends did, too. Having studied at Vanderbilt and traveled extensively in the affected areas names of places and faces of people were so familiar. A friend of mine from Ecuador even sent me a picture taken in Biloxi 39 years back to remind ourselves that we were there!

Paving a New Path - Click To Read Article
Mariana's story - East Timor

Poor Chicharron Vendors Expand Their Business - Click To Read Article
Feliza and Margarita - Bolivia

Pro Mujer - Providing Clients with Essential Health Care - Click To Read Article
Pro Mujer, an international microfinance network composed of partner MFIs in several Latin American countries, is a believer and a practitioner of “Microfinance Plus”— a term that has come to capture the concept of offering integrated services to its clients.

Partnership Models - Click To Read Article
The examples cited are just some of the models where microfinance can be used as a platform to offer and deliver integrated services to clients. Like any business model, there is no single right way to offer services.2

Overcoming the Force of a Tsunami - Click To Read Article
Yuli's story - Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Overcoming HIV and Building Her Community - Click To Read Article
Marie-Claire's story - One of Grameen Foundation’s first Village Phone Operators in Rwanda rises above the odds

Overview of Microfinance - Click To Read Article
Because the term microfinance is used in many different contexts, it can sometimes be oversimplified and viewed in a skewed or narrow perspective.

Moving Beyond the Batey - Click To Read Article
Dieula's story - The Dominican Republic

MFI’s: A Critical Partner in Disaster Mitigation and Relief - Click To Read Article
Natural disasters are indiscriminate in their impact, but for poor communities – many of which are home to microfinance clients – the effects can be devastating.

Leaving the factory to weave her own dream - Click To Read Article
Ying's story - China

Introduction - Microfinance:A Platform for Social Change - Click To Read Article
The phrase “Customer is King” may be an oversimplified cliché in business, but – stripped of all its bells and whistles – this phrase represents the essence of a consumer business.

Inhibitors to Success - Click To Read Article
At its core, microfinance is not terribly different from mainstream consumer finance. From accessing funding to managing the disbursement and collection of funds, microfinance operates like any consumer finance business. But because microfinance serves a very different client segment – the world’s poor – we cannot ignore the different set of challenges these clients face and the implications these challenges have on the organizations serving them.

Inhibitors to Success: Health - Click To Read Article
The loss of income due to sickness and incapacitation of a borrower or a family member, and the high cost of health treatment are detrimental to individuals and families in the developing world. Therefore, it is not surprising that illness and death of family members are among the most common reasons why microfinance participants remain mired in poverty, default on their loans and/or drop out of a microfinance program.

Inhibitors to Success: Natural Disasters - Click To Read Article
Like ill health, natural disasters are another area of vulnerability for the poor.

Inhibitors to Success: Education - Click To Read Article
The third critical factor that prevents some borrowers from sustaining a successful business is lack of education. Most borrowers of microfinance are incurring debt and operating a business for the first time.

Improving Microfinance as an Anti-Poverty Tool - Click To Read Article
As Father Joseph Philippe, the co-founder of the Haitian MFI Fonkoze, states: “You can’t just give a woman a loan and then send her on her way - you have to accompany her as she struggles to make her way out of poverty.”

Increasing Microfinance’s Reach with Integrated Services - Click To Read Article
The destitute—individuals at the very bottom of the socioeconomic scale—are still outside the current scope of most microfinance institutions.

How to Make a Start - Click To Read Article
One good way to get started with creating social business enterprises would be to launch a design competition for social business enterprises. There can be local competition, regional competition and global competition. Prizes for the successful designs will come in the shape of financing for the enterprises, or as partnership for implementing the projects.

Grameen Bank - Alternative Microfinance Approaches - Click To Read Article
Grameen Bank operates on the premise that the poor remain poor not because they do not have the skills or do not work hard, but because the institutions created around them keep them poor.

Fonkoze - Educating Individuals to Become Self Sustaining - Click To Read Article
Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance institution, is another good example of integrating microfinance with other services such as medical treatment, remittances, empowerment, insurance against risk and natural disasters, health insurance, and in particular, education to help improve clients’ situations and contribute to the overall economy.

Enhancing Microfinance Efficacy through Integrated Services - Click To Read Article
Most microfinance organizations serve what we define as the extreme and the moderate poor.

Day Laborer Turned Micro-Businesswoman - Click To Read Article
D. Ellevva's story - India

Conclusion - Microfinance: A Platform for Social Change - Click To Read Article
We firmly believe that an integrated approach to servicing clients can enhance microfinance’s effectiveness as a poverty alleviation tool.

Capitalism is Interpreted too Narrowly - Click To Read Article
Many of the problems in the world remain unresolved because we continue to interpret capitalism too narrowly. In this narrow interpretation we create a one-dimensional human being to play the role of entrepreneur.

Chaibia Sabil's Story - Click To Read Article
Chaibia is a client of Foundation Zakoura, a Grameen Foundation Growth Guarantee recipient.

Borrower Becomes Lender, Helps Others - Click To Read Article
Adela Hualuque, El Alto Branch Office - ProMujer Bolivia

BRAC - Linking Food and Training with Microfinance - Click To Read Article
BRAC, the world’s largest NGO with a large microfinance program serving more than five million Bangladeshi families, is another example demonstrating that microfinance can and should serve the world’s poorest.

Andrea Hernandez Diaz's Story - Click To Read Article
Andrea has been making textile handicrafts for the last twelve years. At 36, she is married and has 6 children. Before she became a client of Grameen Foundation partner AlSol, she embroidered her fabric and maintained a small production. Many times she would not be able to meet the demand for her crafts because she did not have enough resources to invest in her small business.

Baking Bread and Finding Success - Click To Read Article
Louisa's Story - Morocco

A Life Transformed - Click To Read Article
Pentamma's story - India

A Second Chance - Click To Read Article
Beatriz's story - Honduras

Achieving Financial Stability - Click To Read Article
Marie Francois' story - Haiti

A Grandmother Finds Hope After Devastation - Click To Read Article
Hoda's Story - Egypt


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