http://www.yytube.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69:qaa-muhammad-yunus&catid=37:news&Itemid=61
You usually use the term social business instead of social enterprise. Can you explain the difference between them?

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What I was trying to do was to take [entrepreneurship] in one particular direction: turning it into creating a social business. Social business is a business, where you don't want to make money for yourself, but you solve the problem with the business model. This is different from social entrepreneurship. A social entrepreneur may not be involved in a business at all, it could be just helping your neighbourhood, improving healthcare, helping people to do that in a new way.

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What will you be focusing on over the next six months?

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I have been over years spending more and more time on promoting social business, setting up social business, bringing social business to courses at universities, helping design social business institutes and universities ... answering questions related with social business.

This is what I will continue to devote time to. Because now social business is spreading in many more countries – previously it was only in Bangladesh and one or two other countries – this will take up a lot of my time.

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Which countries do you think are leading the way in social business and why do you think this is happening? Where is the concept of social business most developed?

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One is Bangladesh. France is very interested. They have created a social business chair in a business school and they have many companies participating in social business. Its government is very much interested; we are talking of social business in the context of G20, during its presidency of G20 they want to promote the concept of social business.

Also in Japan, and Germany. The mayor of Wiesbaden, Germany, has declared the city a social business city .

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What was the inspiration behind the Grameen bank?

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When I began I was not thinking about creating anything, I was thinking about demonstrating something that might work. I was not looking for examples around the world. I was just thinking if I do it in this way maybe it will work. I was not thinking about creating an institution.

So I learnt by doing. I started in one way and continued in that direction. I never had a blueprint that I have to do this year this, next year that, third year this and on the fifth year that. I was always thinking that if I do one more step it will be over and everybody will be happy.

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Your partnership with Danone is well known. What has been learnt from it?

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It was the first time we had a partnership with a huge multinational company. Until then people where very doubtful about the social business idea. It was something that never makes any sense to business people; maybe for NGOs or some individuals, but definitely not a serious business proposition. When Danone's chairman came forward and said I would like to join with you to do a social business everyone [thought] if Danone does it, then it must be serious.

After that other companies came forward. So today it is a legitimate business and nobody questions the involvement of well-known CEOs in social business. HEC business school became interested [the school now runs a social business certificate programme], if the CEOs are doing it, our students must learn about what they are doing. So that became another subject of economic interest. Today young people are interested.

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Have you ever thought about leaving Bangladesh?

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I could have settled in the USA, I was there, teaching. I finished my degree there. Many like me never come back. Bangladesh's history is not a small history, there are lots of ups and downs, a lot of violence – but I have no intention of leaving the country.

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Is money the problem or what we do with it?

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Money is not the problem in the sense if you could make good use of it. But for many the accumulation of money has become an obsession. It is widely accepted 'the more money I have, the more successful I am'. We should not measure success with money. To me human life success should be measured with what contribution you have made in making this planet a better place. And what kind of life you have lived on this planet. Money per se is a piece of paper ... It is what you do with the money, what impact you create with the money that's important.

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Many people all over the world are starting social businesses having been inspired by your work. What would you say to them?

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They have enormous capacity to make an impact in the world. Pick a subject, pick a problem, design a business to solve that problem, and take it from there.

The interview with Muhammad Yunus was arranged with the help of Nesta

Remembering Norman Macrae - notes ahead of 60 person party @ The Economist Boardroom 16 Nov 2010

 As well as future histories through which dad exponentially mapped changes that were already happening, my dad was most valued for 3 subjects which he wrote up in 2000 leaders published in The Economist 1949-1998, and several books 1 As the journalist of entrepreneurs (ie community sustaining economics and 90% of greatest inventions for humanity rose from very small groups often using intergenerational knowledge) -jokingly he would say that macroecconomists (who increasingly found to be hired to be agents of disgraceful political chicanery) would find entrepreneur the last word in adam smith's lexicon that they could turn against its original community-grounded flow – “between take” refering to that transfer of assets made when french liberte egalite fraternite was socially (if not peacefully) actioned by guillotining royal heads who were monoplising productive assets in particular between 76-84 he wrote trilogy on last quarter of 20th C and first quarter of 21st being the greatest change period ever and so entrepreneurs most exciting tome to be alive:part 1 end the lose-lose-lose economy of big organisational systems before 2010 (end big gov, end big media, end big corp)- the exciting thinng will be the new micro up system designs economics will needpart 2 service economy need tem franchises and empowering not bossy leaders (intrapreneur)prt 3 internet and knowledge value multiplying economics of networks- see next para 2 As first journalist of internet and mobile technology’s death of distance as a cost –the greatest economic stimulus ever to hit one worldwide generation (provided we helped youth collaborate around it)- he and I co-wrote for 1984 publication how the internet generation would change the world by an order of magnitude of productivity : I had between 1973-1976 worked on a live electronic network through which 500 university students in 4 locations interacted simultaneously – part of the UK’s national development program in computer assisted learning where we explored things about action learning that most teachers dont yet begin to use in schools –except new zealand where a guy interviewed dad in 1984 ; interestingly the book of the new zealnad project has also sold 10 million copies in china)  CRASH the world macro down – endgame by 2020s worse than orwell's big brotherorSUSTAIN micro up - 10 times more health and wealth to multiply - by 2010 we would know if we are on this rising exponential as the internet's number 1 game would be to end poverty - 30000 community to community replication solutions would be found partly after a  noble laureate had convened a reality tv show reaching a billion people many who clicked ides onto the net for ongoing testing  

3 As journalist of Asia Pacific www century 1976-2075 which he branded in 1975 s the destiny of 2 billion produtive peoples but which started with his first survey of  a fastest climbing nation - consider japan 1962 and ended with consider bangladesh 2008 (dad's last 2 articles) –dad is probably the only foreign economist to receive the japanese emperor’s award of order of rising sun; citation red something like : help us to see a more human and economical way to do global marketing than we otherwise would

PS rsvp info@worldcitizen.tv - delighted to hear from people who think my dad had some blindnesses so we can integrate the happiest economics ever to rule the world in time to make join dr yunsu invitation to make 2010s humanity's most productive decade - but norman made a good start in freeing dozens of life crtical service marketplces if you actually read the contexts of his writings on many questions that has either been forbidden or in an age of tv politics exposed to one dimensional left versus right debates instead of 360 degree attempts to innovate higher order perspecitives out of deeply detailed diversity ( cf how maps or maths of integration is a bottom up not a top down process of direction; also demnbd that any profession ruling over  networked ge understands multiply as opernad of connectivity an living systems, not just add as operand of seprabliity and lifeless things)

 

2008
*Yunus Speech celebrating Adam Smith's 250th
*Magnusson Prize awarded to Yunus in remembrance of Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University
*Sir Tom Hunter (the Scottsh entrepreneur who helped with origin of funding of Clinton Global Summit) cheer-leads audience - the least Scotland and youth can do to honor you DR Yunus is to action entrepreneuruial projects
2009
*First SB entrepreneurial project: Glasgow Caledonian supplies training staff for Grameen Nursing College meta-partnerhip (10+ partners) in Dhaka
*Second SB entrepreneurial project: Glasgow Caledonian takes responsibility for animating dialogues in changes to law needed before Grameen Scoland and extensions round European Grameen microcredit banking can help make 2010 all youths' and families' most productive decade 
*Glasgow Caledonian Principal funds the second social business professor in the world and the first Yunus Centre outside Dhaka; Chair Cam Donaldson will focus on connections between microbanking and microhealth in poorest communities
2010
*Glasgow University principal signs partnership to develop a new economics course for use wherever places want to sustain jobs and apply correct Adam Smith community sustaining logics
*Universities across Scotland invite Yunus capital partners to share their practices in animating youth 3000 festivals; all Yunus friends help Glasgow pilot annual summer weekend festival geared to yunus invitation to make 2010s most exciting decade.
*Journal of Social Business loans announced with launch due in early 2011. Glasgow suggests creating 2 SB journal spaces - one for 3000 leaders to get updated on most exciting partnerships round Yunus system world of social business; one for any academics who want to present end poverty frameworks in as inter-disciplinary way as possible. 

more details soon -in phone call to DanoneCommuniities last week next invitations to 3000 youth events of danonecommunities are March 22 and April 22

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yunusdiary is co-sponsored by YunusBook, DevelopingSocialBusiness, LondonCreativeLabs & IsabellaWM.com

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here are some of my replies to the debrief Q&A
 http://danonecommunities.com/fr/generationsolidairefeedback
of the 3000 youth event hosted by danone communities and HEC at the Grand Rex Paris 4 Feb 2010 - uncensored text questions from youth with respondents in chief on the stage that included Dr Yunus, Martin Hirsch, Frederick Dalsace chair of social business at HEC and an extraordinary lady from the commission of audiovisuel

love to know if the people on stage knew what texts they were going to get; in a way I would rather that they did!
 

do you think that a text jam can be held independently of having a meeting - ie could the best of a text jam be saved for times when big meetings are convened but also webbed before and afrer; could youth in different cities around the world be involved in a text web knowing that some of the questions would be posed the next time a danone 3000 is convened anywhere

could liberation or other journalists start using some of the text questions in other interviews they make;  tv broadcasters that are funded by the public should one day include such "live" texts at the same time as leaders are intreviewed in the nighly news on such topics as job creation and who is banking for; we do not live in a democracy or a free market globe if politicians or lobbyists censor what questions they are prepared to be asked or if anchor men are too scared about their own power relationship than asking whole truth questions; bring on the social business anchor women http://www.sbworld.tv http://myworlds.tv http://202020.tv

Games you can play to help dr yunus make 2010s the decade that ends poverty Nobel Muhammad Yunus entered his 70th year on 28 July 2009. I was privileged to be there as part of the only international group invited to the launch of Yunus Centre. We got advance news of Dr Yunus' biggest idea yet - turning the 2010s into a Joy of Sustainability decade. He is inviting any corporate leader and university concerned with sustainability to join in co-brand with global grameen the brand most trusted by communities and microeconomists to bank on people who want to resolve their communities' sustainability crises. Leaders of business and learning are influenced by what citizens are aware of and wish for. I assume that its a no brainer that you wish for sustainability for your children but awareness of how to join the yunus drama of leadership is a challenge. He has no money to waste on advertising his solutions to sustain the world he relies on world of mouth (and web!) whereas systems that are compounding loss of sustainability including wall street each have billions of dollars annually to lobby, to advertise, to distract you with sports and other fun games but ones that have relative little meaning compared with humanity's sustainability crises - be these poverty, climate, or other more local challenges like access to health care or whether there will be any decent jobs at your place for your children.

To start with here are some memory games. They may not be the most fun game you have ever played but they are based on 33 years of how people memorise things in the noisy world we live in today where you are likely to be propositioned at least 1000 times daily- 99% by spam or stuff that may be relevant to some but that you cannot afford to buy compared with what really make you and your family's life flow the most. Tell us if you have others

Here are several versions of Global Grameen alphabet games

1.1  if you have heard of grameen, what else do you remember -call out what you can in 15 seconds - record each memoriser by its initial letter ; ask yourself why you recall what you do and compare with what a friend alphabetically recalls; swap your most important memorisers - eg if she plays a more meaningful  game than you do, don't be afraid to ssbstitute your memorisers for hers, or vice versa - and then viralise peer to peer networking telling sustanability's most important alphabetical stories -why isn't this more fun that asking your co-workers if they watched the box last night to see someone kick a ball through 2 white posts ;  if you live in the UK why does the BBC give no air time to sustanability games' millennium shaping goals and (I guess) about 40% of your licence fee budget to stuff that has no more meaning than where a ball went at a particular second

Reason for playing these games the more people who recall sustainability solutions matter  and are gravitating around world leaders partnering Grameen, the more business and university leaders will want to partner Grameen. In other words Yes We can make sustainability’s number 1 centre Grameen the identity everyone wants to link into whenever they are actions sustainability services. With due respect if every american played this game for a few minutes day it would matter more than all the money Warren Buffett or Bill gets gives to foundations. Empowerment - its over to you - how do you want the script for the 2010s to turn out- a rerun of the 2000s, or time for some brand alphabet completely different.

this game has a second half; once we have started to agree the alphabetical characters how do we maxiise their heroic stories in celebrating sustainability -tell me a gramen alphabetical story chris.macrae @yahoo.co.uk

A	ADDIDAS – everyone’s fitness can star in 2010s -decade when big sporting events celebrate sustainable world’s millennium goals; and developing reality of shoeless child campaign in time for world cup in s.africa; then staging a parallel sustainability torch relay to London’s sustainability Olympics; with so many citizens events that nobody who comes for sports will leave without celebrating sustainability	B	BASF - exchanging free experiences of how to use basic chemicals for personal and family safety – eg mosquito nets, vitamin supplements for the poorest	C	CENTRES -university and everywhere (eg grameen hubs round 125000 mobile connected village centres) can be www hubs for missing curriculum of sustainability and the missing spaces for rehearsing these into communal actions- the living labs of You & Us out of which social business designs blossom	D	DANONE – what’s the greatest consumer good that fast moving food brands can serve?- eg replenishing diets of world’s poorest kids and celebrating their health and families love with worldwide branding
E	ENERGY – through Grameen Shakti partners taking ion world leadership with solar and clean energies and biomass both in doing it and as worlds conscience in the race to ensure no 100 million person nation is drowned	F		G		H	Healthcare’s global village partners of grameen include GE, Pfizer, Novo, Nike Foundation, Glasgow Caledonian, TheGreenChildren
I	INTEL- internet for the poor; encouraging grameensolutions.com see Bangladesh does with mobile what india did with internet in a world where creativity, open source collaborations and free markets scale by being flat and micro up	J	JAMIIBORA- out of Kenya, world heritage sight for youth mobile microcredit & every african micro market empowered by social business-staging best ever microcreditsummit april 2010	K		L	Labs – creation spaces of and linkins to the greatest and extremely affordable innovations for & by the sustainability of every community
M	MICROCREDIT – banking and local services markets for and by the poorest women and parents, and entrepreneurially sustaining every community’s win-win-win investments in next generation	N	NOBEL empowering yes we can girls & youth (11 up) to connect economics and peace through celebrating networks and communal processes encouraging sustainable job creation and self-confidence in lifetime’s flow and cross-cultural joy	O	OBAMA – social business exchanges between America and Africa –especially that needed if obama is to keep his commitment to end deaths by malaria by 2015OTTO –cOTTOn and other goods sustainably made and marketed out of africa	P	PRIZES led by Prince Albert Monaco sustainability social business prize competition, and indeed peoples democratic foundations with sustainable micro up futures.
Q		R		S	SOFIA, QUEEN – thanks to Spanish cultures for first queen of microcredit generation and first queen celebrating social business- host of honor at Madrid’s world microcreditsummit 2011	T	TRUST – sharing how to design systems to compound end of poverty, and changing the valuation that rules of banks and governments in particular focus on community trust, transparency sustainability
U		V	VEOLIA – what’s the greatest utilities can do to safeguard lives- eg can you beat 80 times lower priced drinking water than ever previously commercializedVolkswagen – sustainable transport for all peoples	W	WHOLEPLANET –micromarkets are good for food producers and if you know want john mackey of leading food supermarkets whole foods knows everyone’s health	XYZ	YUNUS greatest sustainability investment banker for youth, and future generations wherever peoples celebrate race to end poverty and  fall of walls built to rule over

Family Bank Bahrain SB# 79
http://www.grameentrust.org/dialogue/dialogue73-74/Features_4.html#familybank

Grameen in Bahrain

Prince Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Charities Organization, and Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus inaugurated the Family Bank, a microfinance bank licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, at a ceremony held at the Gulf Hotel Convention Hall in Bahrain on Thursday, January 14, 2010. The ceremony was held under the patronage of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and attended by the Minister for Social Development Dr. Fatima Al Balooshi. The Family Bank will provide collateral-free microcredit to the needy families of Bahrain following the Grameen Bank Approach. Besides a window for the "Grameen Model," the Family Bank will also lend to individuals for investments in microenterprise and work as a wholesale fund to support NGO's providing microcredit in the Kingdom. Since 2007 Grameen Trust, member of Grameen family of companies, has been working with the Government of Bahrain developing the Family Bank. The initiative to establish a microfinance bank in Bahrain started through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Social Development and Grameen Trust during Professor Yunus' visit to the Kingdom in February 2007 at the invitation of His Highness Shaikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Commander in Chief of Bahrain Defense Forces. During that visit Professor Yunus was given the state Honour by the King by giving the Medal of the First Order of Merit, the highest honor of the Kingdom of Bahrain. In May 2007 Grameen Trust conducted a feasibility study in Bahrain and developed the microcredit program of the Family Bank. Grameen Trust has deputed the General Manager for the Grameen program of the Family Bank from Bangladesh who will implement the flagship microcredit program. The Family Bank plans to provide collateral-free microcredit to 4,500 borrowers within three years. The primary beneficiaries of the Family Bank's services will be provided to needy families and the unemployed young of Bahrain. The loan products of the Family Bank will be offered in various tiers with $125 for first-time microcredit borrowers. The Paid up Capital of Family Bank is $31.25 million, while the Authorized Capital is $37.5 million. The Ministry of Social Development and the Royal Charity Organization owns 63% of the Family Bank. The other shareholders of the Family Bank are Ahli United Bank, Kuwait Finance House, Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait and Ithmaar Bank. Grameen Trust is an implementing partner and has a seat on the Board of Directors of the Family Bank. The Family Bank made its first loan disbursement on January 26, 2010. Report by : Tamim Islam

mail info@worldcitizen.tv with suggestions of improvemnts to map of 10 times more economical banking education energy media heathcrae professions place gov

Americas Boston B1 HQ of Grameen America; B2 Microloanfoudation*MIT B2 MIT: Yunus Challenge NY N1 Grameen America 1 2 & St Johns N2 GrameenAmerica- First USA bank branch ; N3 ASA; N3 BRAC DC D1 Son of Obama & Hillary & Bernanke ; D2 Microcreditsummit; D3 FINCA Austin A1 Wholeplanetfoundation LA L1 TheGreenChildren;  USFC1 Grameen-Intel L2 YunusUni at LACI Seattle S1 Micoenergycredits S2 Unitus To locate :  USFC2 Grameen-Pfizer; USFC3 Grameen-Mayo Clinic Haiti  - Fonkoze Mexico - Slim-Grameen Bolivia - Pro Mujera

Europes Paris EFC1 Grameen Danone EFC2 Grameen Veolia EFC3 Grameen Credit Agricole P1 YunusMovie P2 HEC SMBA

Africa Kenya Jamii Bora Malawi Microloanfoundation BRAC countries :

Bangladesh

Rest of Asia & World>

2009.1

2009.2

2009.3

2009.4

2009.5

2009.6

the decade that must change climate if my daugter's children are to have an earth hasn't begun that well with dirsuptions at our favorite microenergy epicentre http://www.gshakti.org - please permit us to retell one of our favourite dipal barua stories

1/100 SB stories: 2010s Joy of Collaboration in Sustainability

 

1/100 ABOUT THE ROYAL ETIQUETTE ON LAUGHTER

Have you ever seen the Queen of England burst out laughing? A huge smile of pride and approval yes, but to go beyond the superhuman pomp and dignity that is demanded by the English class system and global mass media - to transform for a few seconds from head of state to the temporary human bliss that is losing control to a few seconds of pure laughter?

 

I ask because there is a rumor that once when Prince Charles met a director of Grameen Bank – his brief conversation turned into pure laughter. And in my daughter's worldwide diary of Yes We Cans, there is hope for sustainability of all peoples if he did.

 

The story goes that the third time Charles met a director of Grameen Bank it was with the company’s number 2 man Dipal Barua. Charles was awarding him a grand prize http://ashdenawards.org   for services to solar energy. The conversation went something like this:

Charles: Is it true that your company installs more solar units that the whole of the USA? Dipal: sir, Yes.

Charles: but is it also true that you are a bank? Dipal: sir Yes

Charles: but banking and solar energy , how,,, Dipal: ...we are Bankers for the Poor so it is only natural!

Laughter!!

 

When Dipal told this story he was modestly admitting surprise at how much his repartee had been enjoyed. My job creation journalist friends had spent an hour videoing his kindly explaonations and belief that the micro-solar Social Business system his project team had spent 12 years developing is ready for exponential liftoff

Dipal's turn of the decade goal is to create 100000 green jobs for semi-literate village women in Bangladesh this side of London’s Sustainability Olympics 2012. My co-journalist Sofia Bustamante     of http://londoncreativelabs.com   , whom I have ever since dubbed first anchor woman of social business http://sbworld.tv , had nudged Dipal at the end of the interview to sharing his favourite personal story. 

Now, I am delighted if Charles’ spontaneous combustion was stimulated by Dipal who is equally as charming company as the other happy bankers Mrs Begum, Professor Latifee and Dr Yunus who co-founded Grameen from a $27 sustainability investment made in 1976. However, there may be a second way of construing this climactic royal joy.

This was probably Charles third close encounter with the worldwide's most economical system design called Grameen Bank. The other two occasions he had identified with the redoubtable Muhammad Yunus: first when Charles wrote a foreword to Dr Yunus’ book “Banker for the Poor”, second when Prince Charles' Foundation had asked to meet Dr Yunus while he was in Europe receiving his Nobel Prize in 2006.

The idea that the Nobel Prize had been awarded for the win-win-win of peace, and banking, and Prince Charles special interest renewable energy was just too much for a human being to celebrate - with anything other than pure laughter.

Three cheers: for The Queen, The Prince of Wales and the world's happiest banker. May their next Social Business systems meeting free the global market joys of the Olympics, Sustainability and the BBC world service - London 2012. http://cslondon.org http://collaboration12.blogspot.com

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If you feel like celebrating the 2010s with 100 stories of good tidings, joy and Global Social Business -add a story at http://yunusforum.ning.com/forum/topics/100-stories-on-joy-of-2010s (subscription may be requuired to this official forum for mentoring 5000 youth ambassadors and preparing 70th birthday parties)

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Joking-but-Serious References if we need be academic as well as practical about Joy are sought. You may find some of these guide your next clicks into a joyful 2010s :

What The Economist's greatest editor wrote on collaborating around the Social Business design of being The Queen http://bagehot.classicauthors.net/EnglishConstitution/EnglishConstitution3.html

a few quotes from the 7 year old club of delhi formed to celebrate Global Reconciliation Network 2004 annual meet at Indira Gandhi National Centre of Cultures

Einstein- only Gandhi has demonstrated a higher order system that can sustain 21st Century beings globally and locally .Gandhi insisted that human knowledge must always be in charge of information technology.

It seems to me that there is a very fundamental kind of existential decision we make: do we believe our joy or do we believe our neutral states? In the latter case, the move is always one of prudence - not to make decisions in a time of enthusiasm when one is carried away, but rather to wait until everything cools down. I think one of the most important things there is - I would almost say one could make this a kind of maxim for life - is to always make decisions in a state of joy.One should believe one's joy more than one's prudence, or any cautious or fearful state of mind". - Alphonso Lingis."

Drayton: Gandhi realised that lawyers' rule-based human relationship systems will need to be increasingly replaced by empathy-rich systems, the more we cross-culturally interconnect

Ashoka and The Asoka  (Saraca Indica), an ancient tree from which the name of the great emperor Ashoka was derived, means, without grief. The tree and the name have provided some of the most fundamental motifs to Indian art. Representing fertility, it pervades the classical and medieval arts. It is as important in the biological sciences as it is in metaphysics and the artistic traditions. Asoka is wonderful herb also that claims to cure several diseases. According to Ayurvedic medicine, it is the one herb that stands out as especially useful for treating excessive uterine bleeding. The tree symbolises the interdisciplinary approach,

the city of Paris, after a yearlong debate and discussion, has adopted a version of the "microcredit" method, invented by Dr Muhammad Yunus originally to fight poverty in a developing country.

From this month the city of Paris (one of the richest in the world) is covering all its quarters to provide microcredits to the needy through one of the oldest banks of the city, Credit Municipal. The number of poor people needing help in the city has increased by a third during the last one year and is increasing further due to the recent global recession.

A monetary measure of poverty is of course relative. The items to be financed with the microcredit in a developed economy (per capita income over $32,000) and in a developing economy (per capita income, say, $1,000), could also be quite different. In Bangladesh for example it is perhaps a loan to buy a goat or a mobile phone for renting, to a lady in a village; in Paris it is a loan to buy a computer for a young son of an unemployed single mother (who has to live on a "social security" income of 685 Euro per month) or for financing a vocational training course, or to cover the fees for a driving license course.

It is interesting to note that the loanee typically is a woman whether in Bangladesh or in Paris.

In his early experiments in microcredit, in the seventies, Dr Yunus came to a crucial discovery: women in general were more responsible for the well-being and the economic future of the family members than men in a similar economic situation..

Analysing the first institution building phase of Grameen Bank, two Norwegian social scientists, in their early study of the phenomenon, noted (among many other interesting things) the silent pride and determination of Grameen Bank -- its leader and its members --- to succeed in the struggle to free the country from the grip of poverty. The two writers surmised that it could lead to an unexpected present from Bangladesh, a silently proud nation, to the world: an institution to fight poverty anywhere.

Japan

INTERVIEW/ Muhammad Yunus: Selfless side of humans can overcome crisis

BY TETSUO KOGURE

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN NEW DELHI BUREAU CHIEF

Nigeria

Godwin Ehigiamusoe, founder and managing director, Lift Above Poverty Organization (LAPO), a leading microfinance institution in Nigeria recently emerged as the winner of 2008 FATE Foundation’s Model Entrepreneur Award . In this interview with IDRIS UMAR MOMOH, our Benin, correspondent, he spoke on several issues including the FATE Foundation’s Award, achievements of LAPO, his mission in Sierra Leone and the way forward for the microfinance sub-sector .

Relationship with Muhammad Yunus
 Precisely I came into contact with Muhammad Yunus in April 1991, when I attended an International Dialogue programme at Grameen Bank. Since then I maintained close relationship with him and his top associates at Grameen Bank. Professor Yunus is a remarkable fellow who foresees a world without poverty, a goal achievable through access to appropriate financial services especially for low- persons. Most leading microfinance practitioners across the world draw inspiration from this Bangladeshi. He has special affection for LAPO and me. At a point in our recent national history, Professor Yunus was always amazed as how LAPO could come out with remarkable performances in an obviously difficult situation.

FATE Foundation Model Award
First of all, we need to have a background to what the award is. The FATE Foundation is an organization committed to enterprise development in Nigeria. In 2001, the Foundation instituted the award to acknowledge and celebrate an individual who through diligence and enterprise has become a role model for aspiring entrepreneurs. The selection process is thorough and rigorous. Over the years I have held the FATE Foundation in a very high esteem for what it does. Therefore, it was a great honour to be selected as the winner of that award. I think it is also an acknowledgement of LAPO’s accomplishments as well as the potentials of the microfinance sector in which I am involved. I feel good about it, it is better for LAPO and obviously the best acknowledgement of microfinance practice in recent times. 

 LAPO’s contributions to the microfinance sub sector
 It is true that we as an organization have over the years been active in microfinance. We have taken an institutional character which reflects the ways we operate. We have demonstrated commitment to poverty lending that is microfinance. We have also developed tested systems and procedures to do that .We have learnt from our experiences, from our successes and even some cases from our failures. LAPO has large outreach in terms of service delivery across Nigeria . For instance I delivered N9.3 billion to mainly female entrepreneurs in 2008. It is therefore understandable to associate LAPO microfinance in Nigeria and indeed Africa. 
 
LAPO and poverty alleviation
We need to know and look at what microfinance is all about. Essentially it is poverty lending, that is applying access to affordable financial services to address poverty. Considering the volume of financial services we have delivered over the years, as well our contributions to capacity building in the sector it safe to say that LAPO is making impact on poverty. Through provision of loans LAPO currently keeps over 300,000 women in self-employment that owing micro-enterprises. Employment is critical to poverty reduction. These low-income persons are enabled to send and retain their children at school, enhance nutritional status of their households and in some cases create job opportunities for others. LAPO currently engaged 1,712 persons as its staff personnel.
. In all these, we have done very well, and this informed the attention and recognition.

LAPO in Sierra Leone
This is an opportunity for me to put this in a clearer perspective. Many persons have actually asked me this question that is why go outside Nigeria when there is huge market in Nigeria. My response has always been that we at LAPO do not see a country as a market; we rather see country from the perspective of poverty situation and what role provision of financial services can play in poverty reduction. Take our programme in Sierra Leone like some few nations in Africa lost of the height of what is known as microfinance revolution in 1990s on account of civil strife. Currently there is tongs commitment of the part of the leadership and people of that country to grow their economy and reduce poverty. After a visit to a number of countries on the continent we felt an urgent need to support microfinance in Sierra Leone through service delivery and provision of technical assistance to local microfinance institutions. This is what we are doing there. Out interventions outside the country will not affect the pace and quality of our operations in Nigeria. It will have negative effects. These institutions need support for the development of their capacity. They no longer need to go out of Africa for training opportunities.

LAPO and pro-poor enterprise 
I will seek opportunities to support young Nigerians who are aspiring to be successful entrepreneurs.
I will confess that my background prepare me to be involved in a pro-poor enterprise as microfinance .I spent my years in the University besides my studies, organizing symposia and seminar on how to bring better life for the less privileged members of our society or the masses if you like. And therefore my getting involved with LAPO was essentially a sort of a follow up to those things I was doing in the University. But there are also some immediate prompting factors. For example we all know 1980s was when the economic crisis actually started in this country, and by 1986 the then military government adopted the implementations of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which actually brought hardship to our people. It was in this setting working as a cooperative officer in Ogwashi-ukwu which is now in Delta state that I initiated what was then known as “Lift Project” as voluntary initiative. What therefore prompted me was what someone can be regarded as the fallouts of the implementations of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).  
Impact of microfinance policy
 I strongly believe that the microfinance policy and regulatory framework is capable of developing the microfinance sector in the country. And there are few things to be done .For instance, there is need to look at the financing of microfinance in Nigeria, and that means that microfinance institutions and banks will have access to funds to make loans to low-income persons or micro-enterprises. It is obvious that low-income persons are not above to make enough deposits from which microfinance banks to use to finance their loan portfolio. The good news is that the Central Bank of Nigeria is already taking steps in this direction. The process should pace up as the greatest challenging for microfinance banks and institutions in inadequate re-financing mechanisms. They need funds to disburse to the poor. Operational procedures of what institutional arrangement or fund to come up should be clear, objective and transparent. Another area is that of provision of professional training for microfinance practitioners. There is lack of experienced staff; therefore there is the need to support institutions as LAPO to provide training for fledging institutions and persons aspiring to be practitioners. These are the key issues that need to be looked into.

Role of commercial banks in micro funding.
My position of this is clear; commercial banks have no business in the business of retailing microfinance services. They do not need to set up microfinance subsidiaries to benefit or make money from microfinance sub-sector. They should be involved in wholesale micro financing. They should rather set up Microfinance Funds owned and managed by the banks. Retail microfinance banks and institutions can access these funds for on-lending to their customers. This is more cost effective and it is the conventional practice international. However some banks in Nigeria but with international ownership are already using this wholesale approach, and I know they are not complaining.

Government, microfinance operators
 My appeal first is to the microfinance operators, that is investors and especially managers should strive to be very professional in their approach. Borrowers or owners of micro-enterprises should maximize the benefits of access to affordable financial services. Relevant government agencies to support the microfinance sector by spearheading the establishment of microfinance fund for the purpose of on-lending. Development agencies also have a role to play. Because of their experience in other countries where microfinance has been sufficiently developed they can also support the development of microfinance in Nigeria. Commercial banks have a major to play.

china ceo alibaba:

Interview with China’s Internet Godfather

The Financial Time’s Kathrin Hille interviews Jack Ma, founder and chairman of China’s online trading site Alibaba.com. View the video here:

Although China’s economy is so far faring better than others, domestic trade has slowed, affecting a large chunk of Alibaba’s business – 28.7m of its registered users are in its home market. To soften the blow, Alibaba has facilitated loans in excess of Rmb1bn to SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] that would otherwise have struggled to get money.

“We do the same thing as Muhammad Yunus,” says Mr Ma, referring to the father of microcredit

Three Entries from Journal of Norman Macrae: Diary of a Microeconomist 1943-2009

 

Entry 1 - After Royal Automobile Club lunch on Future Capitalism with Dr Yunus

(St James’ London 2008, Feb15)

 The Importance of Muhammad Yunus The Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 was controversially awarded in Oslo to a "banker for the poor" in once basket case Bangladesh. Since the microcredit system pioneered by this Doctor Muhammad Yunus really has raised record millions of Bangladeshi women from the world’s direst poverty, Yunus was greeted on his recent visit to London largely by the misunderstanding Left. But as an octogenarian economist, I also had lunch with him and thrill fully to his stated aim to "harness the powers of the free market to solve the problems of poverty", and his brave belief that he can "do exactly that". This apparent appearance of a viable system of banking for the poor has important implications. We had better start by examining how microcredit almost accidentally came about.  START IN A STARVING VILLAGEDuring Bangladeshi’s terrible famine year of 1974, Dr Yunus (who had attained his doctorate in economics in a fairly free market American university) was back at his 1940 birthplace of Chittagong, Professor of Economics at the university there. He took a field party of his students to one of the famine threatened villages. They analysed that all 42 of the village’s small businesses (tiny farm plots and handcrafts) were poverty-trapped by moneylenders.  To be productively free, they needed to borrow a ridiculously tiny total of $27 on reasonable terms. First thought was to give the $27 as charity. But Yunus reflected: a social business dollar that needed to be entrepreneurially paid back from careful use in an income generating activity can be much more effective than a charity dollar which might be used only once and frittered away. All of those first 42 loans were fully repaid, and lent back, and after 9 years further experiments Yunus in 1983 founded his Grameen (which means Village) Bank. Its priority was to make loans that were desperately needed by the poor instead of the usual banking priority to make loans to the rich who could provide collateral against what they happened to want to borrow. In the next 24 years, Grameen provided $6 billion of loans to poor people with an astonishing 99% repayment rate. In 2007, it had seven million borrowing customers, 97% of them women (who tend to be the poorer sex in rural Islamic societies) in 73000 villages of Bangladesh. Microcredit banking networks have now reached 80% of Bangladeshi’s poorest rural families and most of Grameen’s own borrowers have risen above the absolute poverty line. When a Grameen Bank manager goes to a new village, he has entrepreneurially to search for poor but viable borrowers. He earns a star if he achieves 100% repayment of loans, and another star if he attains achievement of the 16 guarantees that all customers are asked to pledge, ranging from intensive vegetable growing through attendance of all children at school, to abolition of dowries. A branch with five stars would often transfer to ownership by the poor women themselves. A branch with no stars would be in danger of closing, so borrowers tend to rally round with suggestions, such as which unreliable repayers to exclude. As early as 1996, a breakthrough income generator was the franchise of telephone ladies. They borrowed enough to buy a cheap mobile phone from a Grameen subsidiary. They would draw fees for phoning to see if more profitable prices for crops were available in a neighbouring village, and from anybody who wanted to hire the phone to contact the outside world. This is a job that could only become important in a microcredit setting; the owner of a mobile phone in richer suburbia would not find many customers to hire her set. The apparently small change of the mobile telephone lady has compounded the most extraordinary end digital-divides consequence. Today Bangladesh is at the epicentre of mobile partnerships, one of which is cheerfully known as http://bankabillion.org  Children have always been at the core of Yunus visions of sustainability investment. So it was fitting that the innovation strategy of Future Capitalism began with a co-brand designed to improve the nutrition of poor children in the villages of Bangladesh. This social business was formed with the large French food multinational called Danone. Grameen-Danone test marketed to find what sorts of fortified yogurt Bangladeshi children would like. Although Danone at first wanted large plants with refrigerated systems, Grameen won the debate to make then small plants who bought local milk and very cheap local distributors who knew which families had children who might buy the cheap yogurt fresh. Danone had to agree not to pay any dividend from the sales of the yogurt in Bangladesh so as to keep the price cheap at a few US cents per cup, but its $1 million investment remains returnable, it has learnt a lot about sales of a new product in poor countries, and immense goodwill is multiplying round Danone branding as the lead global corporate benchmark of Future Capitalism  THE FUTUREFuture Capitalism partnering ( http://futurecapitalism.com ) is a leading idea for networked economies whose time has come. Yet my view is that Grameen will soon be seen as central to an even more critical free market choice : what future of banking will people everywhere want? In this 2008, conventional bankers to the rich have trotted in panic behind the American giants who grossly mislent on subprime mortgages, and then sold these loans on in "securitised", and exploding and even "derivitavised" packages to weaker funds and banks who have frantically tried to disguise from their shareholders and from themselves how unmarketable and worthless some of these assets are. If all bank statements in early 2008 had been utterly and appallingly honest, runs by depositors out of them could already have accelerated out of control. Such banking crises are likely to recur before and after next January when a new American president takes office. Across the Atlantic, Britons should remember that our prime minister in 1929 was our last previous dire right wing Labour Scot, and that he had to coalesce in 1931 with a Baldwin who was as deaf as today’s Cameron to why it is better to widen budget deficits in a slump. 

A lesson in how to run village businesses and not to handle bank crises comes also from Japan. When I wrote my first book on Japan’s economy nearly 50 years ago, Japan had about two dozen lightly taxed exporting multinationals who bought their components marvelously cheaply. The car factories bought their ball bearings from tiny village firms, and the banks attached to Toyota etc kept on lending even when some peasant’s first bearings did not past muster but gradually propelled him to work with or under a brighter neighbouring peasant whose products did. That seemed inefficient to American experts and in the early 1960’s I had a translated debate on Tokyo television with an American who said that such slack banking would ruin the country. I rejoiced as Japan then quintupled its living standards in the next twenty years and its banks became temporarily the most powerful and prosperous in the world. The crash came when in the late 1980s American business schools convinced Japanese factories that components must be bought just-in-time. The big banks turned to financing suppliers who could do this (which were not those striving to be cheapest). Banks lent mainly to new firms who could provide collateral which meant to richer ones. Once they were lending mainly to the rich they blew up such a bubble that the nearest golf course to Tokyo was said to have a greater land value than the whole state of California. When this bubble burst, all the banks had bad debts, which the government helped them to hide so Japanese living standards stop rising fast since circa 1989. This is the threat to the whole rich world today.

  Entry 2 - Published in The 2024 Report – a concise Future History, 1984 - by Norman & Chris Macrae The View from 1984 on whether going global and practicing economics will systemise sustainability networks, or not?  By 2005, the gap in income and expectations between the rich and poor nations was recognised to be man's most dangerous problem. Internet linked television channels in sixty-eight countries invited their viewers to participate in a computerised conference about it, in the form of a series of weekly programmes. Recommendations tapped in by viewers were tried out on a computer model of the world economy. If recommendations were shown by the model to be likely to make the world economic situation worse, they were to be discarded. If recommendations were reported by the model to make the economic situation in poor countries better, they were retained for 'ongoing computer analysis' in the next programme. In 2024, it will then be easy to see this as a forerunner of the TeleComputing (TC) conferences which play so large a part in our lives today, both as pastime and principal innovative device in business. But the truth of the 2005-2010 breakthrough tends to irk the highbrow. It succeeded because it was initially amplified by a rather downmarket television reality programme. About 400 million people watched the first programme, and 3 million individuals or groups tapped in suggestions. Around 99 per cent of these were rejected by the computer as likely to increase the unhappiness of mankind. It became known that the rejects included suggestions submitted by the World Council of Churches and by many other pressure groups. This still left 31,000 suggestions that were accepted by the computer as worthy of ongoing analysis. As these were honed, and details were added to the most interesting, an exciting consensus began to emerge. Later programmes were watched by nearly a billion people as it became recognised that something important was being born. These audiences were swollen by successful telegimmicks. The presenter of the first part of the first programme was a roly-poly professor who was that year's Nobel laureate in economics, and who proved a natural television personality. He explained that economists now agreed that aid programmes could sometimes help poor countries, but sometimes most definitely made their circumstances worse. When Mexico was inflating at over 80 per cent a year in the early 1980s , the inflow to it of huge loanable funds made its inflation even faster and its crash more certain. The professor set Mexico's 1979-1981 economy on the model, pumped in the loaned funds and showed how all the indicators ( higher inflation, lower real gross domestic product and so on) then flashed red, signaling an economy getting worse, rather than green, signaling an economy getting better. ..The professor then put the model back to mirror the contemporary world of 2005, and played into it various nostrums that had been recommended by politicians of left, right and centre, but mostly left. The dials generally flashed red. Then the professor provided another set of recommendations, and asked viewers who wished to play to tap in their own guesses on the consequent movement of key economics variables in the model. Those who got their guesses right to within a set error were told they had qualified for a second round of a knock-out economic guesstimators' world championship. Knockout competitions of this sort continued for viewers throughout the series of programmes. In the second part of that first programme, the presenters dared to introduce two political decisions into the game. They said that government-to-government aid programmes had been particularly popular among politicians during the age of over-government, but there was growing agreement that government-to-government aid was the worst method of hand-out. The excessive role played by governments in poor countries was one of the barriers to their economic advance, and a main destroyer of their people's freedom. Could anyone have thought it would be wise to give aid to President Mbogo? In consequence, the most successful economic aid programmes had been those operated through the International Monetary Fund, which imposed conditions on how borrowing governments should operate. The professor showed that IMF-monitored operations in most years had brought more green flashes from the model than red. But this involved IMF officials - often from the rich countries - in telling governments of poor countries what to do; and one of the objectives of this town meeting of the world was to diminish such embarrassments. 

The first questions to be asked in the next few programmes, said the compilers, were 1) which countries should qualify for aid? ; and having decided that, 2) up to what limits and conditions? ; and 3) through what mechanisms? They promised that later programmes after the first half-dozen would examine how any scheme could be used to diminish the power of governments and increase the power of free markets and free people.

   

Entry 3 - View During Congress Trillion Dollar Bailout

(Wimbledon, last quarter 2008)

 How to Avert A Great Depression Through the Hungry 2010s?  Answer, By Making All Banking Very Much Cheaper If banks in rich democracies had been truly competitive institutions, at least one of them somewhere would have seized the main opportunity created by the computer. This main opportunity was to make all deposit-banking vastly cheaper than ever before. By this cheapening it should make such banking hugely more profitable. Then further competition would search for the cheapest ways to guide all the world’s saving into the most profitable (or otherwise most desirable) forms of capital investment, thus enriching all mankind. Instead, during 2008 the total losses of banks in rich democracies – in North America, West Europe and Japan – soared into trillions of dollars. Fearful for their solvency, these banks virtually stopped lending. The issuance of corporate bonds, commercial paper, and many other financial products largely ceased. Hedge and insurance firms also crashed. Mankind is thus threatened in the 2010s with its longest great depression since the hungry 1930s. Why? The strange answer seems to be that other happy consequences of modern technology promised to make this cheapening even faster. Call centres in Bangalore vastly undercut the middle class salaries of Midland bank clerk who until the 1950s expensively answered clients’ questions in their branches in the City of London. Cheap mobile phones kept village ladies in once miserable Bangladesh as fully in touch with market prices as is the chief research officer of the First National Bank of Somewhere in California. His weekly salary is still 1000 times greater than the previous annual earnings of that village lady. The cost-effective way of running the old Midland or First National then seemed to be to cut its total salary cost by something like 99%. This did not please Western welfare governments, or the decent chief executives of the old Midland or First National bank. 

Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shockFrom a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block – WS Gilbert in The Mikado - why it is uncomfortable to work in an industry which needs 99% redundancies.

 Western welfare governments have long preferred to run their banks in high cost cartels, and even invented reasons why this seems to be moral.  Their deposit-banks have usually kept in cash only 10% of the total amount deposited with them. If 11% of depositors suddenly feared that their banks might go bust, this could accelerate a run that would send them bust indeed. Governments therefore thought that depositors would be less fearful if they were assured that the banks were officially and tightly regulated. Actually, this mainly meant that the banks had to hire ever more expensive lawyers so as to escape any crippling consequences from this regulation. The attached quote shows that Samuel Pepys understood this fact of life in his Diaries of July 21, 1662. 

I see it is impossible for the King to have things done so cheaply as do other men – Samuel Pepys on discovering an important commercial fact of life in his Diary, 21 July, 1662

 The decent bosses of the deposit banks felt that the best way of avoiding sacking nine tenths of their staffs was by competing with a very different sort of financing called merchant banking whose earnings and bonuses were far more generous than those given to their own staff. These merchant banks were of peculiarly differing pedigree. In London, it was assumed that they could best be run by families like Barings who had done the job for over 200 years. In the 1990s, Barings went totally bust because one of its hired traders bet much of its money on a hunch that a bad earthquake in Japan meant that the shares of Japanese banks and insurance companies would become more profitable. In Zurich, merchant banks felt it most moral to keep the accounts of their depositors totally secret, especially if these accounts were being used to defraud their own countries’ tax authorities. In 2008 those secretive banks were then defrauded. In Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros bid up their annual bonuses to millions of dollars for each partner. In 2008 even Goldman Sachs made a loss and Lehman Bros went bust. A former chairman of the Federal Reserve argues that “fearful investors clearly require a far larger capital cushion to lend unsecured to any financial intermediary now”. He therefore thinks that taxpayers money should be ladled into them to make those investors less fearful. This seems far more likely to make depositors intermittently more terrified and cause any depression into the 2010s to linger on and on. 

In the 1930s, the chief economic adviser to the government of Siam was called Prince Damrong. I try always to remember it – quote from former director of International Monetary Fund.

 One of the few big banks to make a profit in 2008 was the Grameen Bank (which means Village Bank) in that once basket-case country called Bangladesh. The sole staff in a branch serving several villages was once a woman student. It is now more usually someone who has learnt to use the computer in the right way.  How to create cost-cutting banks? Learning from Dr Yunus and those who have exponentially sustained community rising microcredit seems to be the best way forward worldwide women and USA Congressmen can get. http://www.results.org/website/article.asp?id=3709   MicroBioAs a child, Norman Macrae bumped into Peter Drucker. It was dinner time at the British Embassy in Stalin’s Moscow where Norman’s father was a consulate. Both Norman and Peter’s experiences of the 1930s determined their love of writing up for big management stories of why and how entrepreneurial systems are born micro. The teenage Norman studied economics from an Indian correspondence course whilst waiting to fly RAF planes out of Bangladesh in world war 2. He then went up to Cambridge as part of the last student generation to be lectured by Keynes. He married the daughter of the British Raj judge who was tutored for 25 years in change by Mahatama Gandhi –Kenneth Kemp went from being the Mumbai judge who imprisoned Gandhi in the 1920s to helping write up the legalese of India’s Independence in the 1940s. Norman went on to Deputy Edit The Economist for 4 decades. He enjoyed reporting system change before it exponentially compounded - including in 1962 the exponential rise of Japan, and between 1976-1984 The Entrepreneurial Revolution trilogy. The latter provided a microeconomics map of how to transform - and sustainability invest - through the end of the Industrial era whilst cross-culturally uniting the generation destined to be worldwide. In 2009, Norman remains reasonably optimistic: Yes Human Beings Can End Poverty - if we choose to collaborate and celebrate this as our generation’s defining goal.

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SBworld.tv  &Yunus.tv  1/100 SB stories: 2010s Joy of Collaboration in Sustainability

 

1/100 ABOUT THE ROYAL ETIQUETTE ON LAUGHTER

Have you ever seen the Queen of England burst out laughing? A huge smile of pride and approval yes, but to go beyond the superhuman pomp and dignity that is demanded by the English class system and global mass media - to transform for a few seconds from head of state to the temporary human bliss that is losing control to a few seconds of pure laughter?

 

I ask because there is a rumor that once when Prince Charles met a director of Grameen Bank – his brief conversation turned into pure laughter. And in my daughter's worldwide diary of Yes We Cans, there is hope for sustainability of all peoples if he did.

 

The story goes that the third time Charles met a director of Grameen Bank it was with the company’s number 2 man Dipal Barua. Charles was awarding him a grand prize http://ashdenawards.org   for services to solar energy. The conversation went something like this:

Charles: Is it true that your company installs more solar units that the whole of the USA? Dipal: sir, Yes.

Charles: but is it also true that you are a bank? Dipal: sir Yes

Charles: but banking and solar energy , how,,, Dipal: ...we are Bankers for the Poor so it is only natural!

Laughter!!

 

When Dipal told this story he was modestly admitting surprise at how much his repartee had been enjoyed. My job creation journalist friends had spent an hour videoing his kindly explaonations and belief that the micro-solar Social Business system his project team had spent 12 years developing is ready for exponential liftoff

Dipal's turn of the decade goal is to create 100000 green jobs for semi-literate village women in Bangladesh this side of London’s Sustainability Olympics 2012. My co-journalist Sofia Bustamante     of http://londoncreativelabs.com   , whom I have ever since dubbed first anchor woman of social business http://sbworld.tv , had nudged Dipal at the end of the interview to sharing his favourite personal story. 

Now, I am delighted if Charles’ spontaneous combustion was stimulated by Dipal who is equally as charming company as the other happy bankers Mrs Begum, Professor Latifee and Dr Yunus who co-founded Grameen from a $27 sustainability investment made in 1976. However, there may be a second way of construing this climactic royal joy.

This was probably Charles third close encounter with the worldwide's most economical system design called Grameen Bank. The other two occasions he had identified with the redoubtable Muhammad Yunus: first when Charles wrote a foreword to Dr Yunus’ book “Banker for the Poor”, second when Prince Charles' Foundation had asked to meet Dr Yunus while he was in Europe receiving his Nobel Prize in 2006.

The idea that the Nobel Prize had been awarded for the win-win-win of peace, and banking, and Prince Charles special interest renewable energy was just too much for a human being to celebrate - with anything other than pure laughter.

Three cheers: for The Queen, The Prince of Wales and the world's happiest banker. May their next Social Business systems meeting free the global market joys of the Olympics, Sustainability and the BBC world service - London 2012. http://cslondon.org http://collaboration12.blogspot.com

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If you feel like celebrating the 2010s with 100 stories of good tidings, joy and Global Social Business -add a story at http://yunusforum.ning.com/forum/topics/100-stories-on-joy-of-2010s (subscription may be requuired to this official forum for mentoring 5000 youth ambassadors and preparing 70th birthday parties)

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Joking-but-Serious References if we need be academic as well as practical about Joy are sought. You may find some of these guide your next clicks into a joyful 2010s :

What The Economist's greatest editor wrote on collaborating around the Social Business design of being The Queen http://bagehot.classicauthors.net/EnglishConstitution/EnglishConstitution3.html

a few quotes from the 7 year old club of delhi formed to celebrate Global Reconciliation Network 2004 annual meet at Indira Gandhi National Centre of Cultures

Einstein- only Gandhi has demonstrated a higher order system that can sustain 21st Century beings globally and locally .Gandhi insisted that human knowledge must always be in charge of information technology.

It seems to me that there is a very fundamental kind of existential decision we make: do we believe our joy or do we believe our neutral states? In the latter case, the move is always one of prudence - not to make decisions in a time of enthusiasm when one is carried away, but rather to wait until everything cools down. I think one of the most important things there is - I would almost say one could make this a kind of maxim for life - is to always make decisions in a state of joy.One should believe one's joy more than one's prudence, or any cautious or fearful state of mind". - Alphonso Lingis."

Drayton: Gandhi realised that lawyers' rule-based human relationship systems will need to be increasingly replaced by empathy-rich systems, the more we cross-culturally interconnect

Ashoka and The Asoka  (Saraca Indica), an ancient tree from which the name of the great emperor Ashoka was derived, means, without grief. The tree and the name have provided some of the most fundamental motifs to Indian art. Representing fertility, it pervades the classical and medieval arts. It is as important in the biological sciences as it is in metaphysics and the artistic traditions. Asoka is wonderful herb also that claims to cure several diseases. According to Ayurvedic medicine, it is the one herb that stands out as especially useful for treating excessive uterine bleeding. The tree symbolises the interdisciplinary approach,
dear estelle and storytellers of entrepreneurial revolutionary facts http://erworld.tv  are stranger than fiction

I believe you will find that mostofa can give you a list of the 50 most extraordinary projects going on inside grameen and if you want to see the project leader help organise that during your 30 day stay; brac would have a parralel 50 that future capitalists might want to map; I am not a film-maker so I am unclear whether you have a lot of fact finding personal interviews to do at this stage or if you at yunusmovie are videoing straight away

I believe you can gain from early going to the film archives and the nobel history museum of grameen's evolution if you havent already done so; again mostofa can help with that; there is also a local photographer who literally has albums of when yunus was a longish haired revolutionary and some of the early village centres look a bit like female army training camps ; the story behind this is (I am told) that when dr yunus' 4 founders first went into the vilages in the eraly 1970s they found women so down trodden that they decided even the body language of respect for self needed developing and so early 16 decisions meetings do look a bit military - I have one example from early era on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbfWCUsyW3Y&feature=channel_page

again depending on what research you have already done, there are about 20 extraordinary books at about $5 each on the whole evolution of grameen and brac and asa but only about 10 bookshops that sell them - mostofa can take you to one-these books are not at all the same as the glossy international books - of which banker for the poor by yunus and the new freedom from want by ian smillie on brac are defining practical histories as far as I understand

 there are also about 50 published yunus speech-leaflets including "growing up with 2 giants" the national strategy that he and all microcredit leaders aim to develop in connecting bangladesh econmy with china and india; bangaldesh has the deepest sustainability rural solutions that both china and india need

the evolution of grameen around what is now 125000+ village centres (hubbing as safe spaces for women to peer to peer learn and communallky organise) is of course why grameen was from day 1 the bank -and 7 million female microentreprenurs who became nobel prize winners - searching for every sustainability solution not just a loan counter,

 and since 1996 why the revolution of village women owing the strategy of the nation's largest mobile phone company was a more practical revolution for sustainability than the www itself (somewhere in this is the mit entrepreneur iqbal quadir without whom one wonders if yunus would have timed how to get the mobile franchise at about 1% of what it would have been somd at if global consultants and world banks ever made order of magnitude correct estimates of market futures);

if you add up the sectors that make up bangaldesh's economy, I believe you will find that over half are owned by the poorest - a brilliant third of a century expoenmtials compound multiplier that brac and grameen folowed by other microcredits like asa have colaboratively networked; it interesst me that so few economists noted that it only took enron 40 quarters to compound itself from a tiny company to at its peak one of the biggest 50 economies national or corporate in the whole world - all utter fiction and until wall street's escapades the most economically destructive single system ever accounted for;

and yet when bangladeshi microcredits do the real work of sustainability investment the same rotting nmacroeconomists  and (the now) 4 mathematically fictional global accounting chains abismally try to block everyone seeing  hi-trust's good news- even Ian Fleming wouldnt have dared to write up such a villainous networking script

absolutely central if you havent already met her is mrs begum - the mother of microcredit as the only woman in the founding four and therefore the only one who could speak directly with initial vilage members- like others of Grameen founders she is at what would ordinarily be retiring age so its magic you make the film now- she is also one of the greatest unknown educational revolutionaries -my favourite of all entrepreneurial compasses

towards the end of next week once mostofa has finished exams I will be in london and aim to go through all the video and flight itineraries already known about- so if you can tell me by may 27 or so if you know your flight path- otherwise as I book through a london travel agency which is used to my emails I can just introduce you to the travel agent and they can order it for you I am guessing that mostofa may well go early to dhaka eg about the same time 3rd week of june you do but obvously its much better if he finishes exams before we go to bext level of detailed discussion; I myself probably need to get to dhaka about 4 days before june 29 as I need to do one search of interns etc amd have a go at demolishing Grameen's main meeting room which is often set up like a mini united nations intsead of an open space; it is also the case that we might start offering some field visits before  june 29 as well as immediately after to the whole group who are coming

It is worth knowing that everything closes on friday -the main weekend day and the working week is seen very much as sunday through thursday inclusive; obviously vivian has been to bangladesh before, but have you? -alexis or sofia might be able to answer some detailed questions if you have not

chris macrae http://yunus.tv

in hunt of the world's 100 miost urgent sustainability crises and benchmarks for  open source solutions