GreenMicrofinancing

 

J2008 Tech Awards TONIGHT!  Join a Live Webcast   7:00 pm PST

Mr. D. Vidya Sagar, Director of SKG Sangha, INDIA, is part of an esteemed group of 2008 Tech Laureates, who were selected from hundreds of nominations representing 68 countries.  Today, twenty-five innovators from around the world, recognized for developing and applying technology to benefit humanity, will receive the 2008 Tech Award in San Jose, California.  

These Laureates have developed new technological solutions or innovative ways to use existing technologies to significantly improve the lives of people around the world.  This year, the 2008 Laureates represent the truly global vision of the program, spanning countries such as Senegal, Peru, Hungary, Canada, Namibia, Germany, Egypt, India, United Kingdom, Laos and the United States. Their work impacts people in many more countries worldwide.

Professor Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of microcredit and founder of Grameen Bank, is the recipient of the 2008 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award. Dr. Yunus will accept this distinguished honor during The Tech Awards Gala tonight! 

GreenMicrofinance team welcomes Mr. D. Vidya Sagar, this coming weekend to Philadelphia as our guest.  On Saturday evening, we are hosting an event, Harnessing Clean Energy to Microfinance: Waste is Wealth, during which Mr. Sagar will be sharing on biogas technologies that address a range of issues including energy, sanitation, poverty, health, and education.  Please check Betsy Teutsch's blog post for more information on our First Delaware Valley Event.   

 

J2008 Tech Awards TONIGHT!  Join a Live Webcast   7:00 pm PST

Mr. D. Vidya Sagar, Director of SKG Sangha, INDIA, is part of an esteemed group of 2008 Tech Laureates, who were selected from hundreds of nominations representing 68 countries.  Today, twenty-five innovators from around the world, recognized for developing and applying technology to benefit humanity, will receive the 2008 Tech Award in San Jose, California.  

These Laureates have developed new technological solutions or innovative ways to use existing technologies to significantly improve the lives of people around the world.  This year, the 2008 Laureates represent the truly global vision of the program, spanning countries such as Senegal, Peru, Hungary, Canada, Namibia, Germany, Egypt, India, United Kingdom, Laos and the United States. Their work impacts people in many more countries worldwide.

Professor Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of microcredit and founder of Grameen Bank, is the recipient of the 2008 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award. Dr. Yunus will accept this distinguished honor during The Tech Awards Gala tonight! 

GreenMicrofinance team welcomes Mr. D. Vidya Sagar, this coming weekend to Philadelphia as our guest.  On Saturday evening, we are hosting an event, Harnessing Clean Energy to Microfinance: Waste is Wealth, during which Mr. Sagar will be sharing on biogas technologies that address a range of issues including energy, sanitation, poverty, health, and education.  Please check Betsy Teutsch's blog post for more information on our First Delaware Valley Event.   

 

 GreenMicrofinance's Clean Technology expert, Kathleen Robbins, is known to many of you from her GMf blog posts about her work with jatropha in Haiti, as well as her reports from Bali, Vietnam and other locations her important work takes her.  Her passion has not gone unnoticed!  She is one of the recipient's of ConcernUSA's Brigid Award, which she will receive at their annual event this winter in Chicago.  Concern USA is part of Concern International, founded in Ireland in response to Biafra's famine in the 70's.  (For baby boomer like myself, this was a terrible, longterm crisis which motivated many young people to political action,  like Darfur is today. )  Concern International's mission is "targeting extreme poverty through effective programs" and they now operate in 28 countries around the world, both delivering help in the many global disasters which disproportionately effective the world's poorest, as well as providing programs to address the root causes of extreme poverty.

The award is presented annually to three outstanding women, honoring them for demonstrating justice, generosity and compassion in their lives and work.  " Brigid, a fifth century Irish woman, dedicated her life to helping the poor and the sick. She was a protector of the environment, a promoter of peace and reconciliation, a defender of equality, and an advocate of the less fortunate."  Kathleen (are you of Irish descent, Kathleen?) is being honored for her work in environmental issues and rural poverty.  Truly, her Jatropha project can address both ecology and poverty simultaneously.  We are so proud of you, Kathleen!

Wish we could all be there to see you receive this much deserved honor.

Photo by Pamoj - women extracting jatropha oil

For those who live in the industrialized world, our experience of a non-electrified existence is very limited.  For many of us, the normalcy of turning on light switches and plugging in appliances to do our work goes back 3 or 4 generations.  Electrical access is so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible.  So extensive is our lack of attention to electricity that when we lose it in, say, a storm-related black-out, we are surprised at how many of our systems stop working.  Landlines, boilers, hot water, in addition to the obvious refrigeration/freezer system, garage doors, and traffic lights – you name it.  Without electricity modern life quickly is dismantled.  Candles, flashlights, crank radios, and neighbors suddenly appear.  But such outages are temporary; in a worst-case dismal scenario, maybe a few days.

 

In the developing world, the absence of electrification forces 1.8 billion people to make do without the blessings so many of us take for granted, because we have never known life without them.  It means long, hard hours of physical labor, performing tasks that take us moments.  It means lugging firewood or dung to burn and living with smoky air.  Or using kerosene lamps and buying and transporting the fuel for them in small, expensive amounts.  It means going to bed when it’s dark.  It means using precious fuel to boil water, just to purify it, since if there isn’t electricity, there’s likely not running water either.  It means doing chores during daylight, instead of attending school.  It means dependence on generators or expensive, single-use batteries, since it’s not possible to recharge batteries without electricity. 

 

The overall term for this grossly inequitable distribution of the world’s power sources is energy poverty.  It is one of many ways that the world’s poorest remain so, in a discouraging cycle of hard work not yielding any way out of marginal existence.  It is both an ethical issue as well as a win-win opportunity for entrepreneurial solutions.  In a world which is meeting its maximum carbon load as well as peak oil, the future for the 1.8 billion without access to energy is undeniably through alternative, renewable, clean energy technologies, jumpstarted by infusions of capital.  Since third world families consume such modest amounts of energy relative to the West, small inputs of micro-hydro, solar, biofuel, or micro-wind generated energy have the potential to provide a crucial toehold on the ladder up out of subsistence, bringing enhanced health and literacy along, too!

 

Let us join together to not just solve these problems, but thrive together, on a greener, more just earth.

This past week at the summit a major topic was interest rate transparency, as some MFIs have come under fire for charging relatively high rates and allowing "mission drift" to move them to a priority of high profits instead of the original mission of poverty alleviation. Long time microfinance insider Chuck Waterfield has taken the initiative to address these concerns, launching MicroFinance Transparency.

A highlight for me was the lively discussion between Professor Muhammed Yunus, Damian von Stauffenberg (the founder of MicroRate), and Chuck. They debated the importance of the profit motive in growing microfinance, with Yunus holding firm to the ideal of not making a profit, seeking only to break-even and pass any potential profits back to the clients. In my view microfinance has always been a profitable business proposition, with profit driving the ability to expand the reach of poverty alleviation efforts. Perhaps the debate should be reframed around reinvesting profits to expand reach vs. passing profits on to outside investors. Or is it possible to do both?

 The topic is getting great press in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and many more (100+ stories listed when I searched Google News).  It's great to see this positive move coming from inside the Microfinance community to address these issues now rather than later.
 
With current energy price pressures, environmental degradation, and climate change looming, we at GreenMicrofinance hope to lead a similar movement among MFIs, disclosing standardized metrics of environmental impact and sustainablility.

Over the past days we have been video-taping various folks here at the conference. I had the privilege to meet and chat with Ingrid Munro founder of JamiiBoro in Kenya, a member organization that works with and uplifts street beggars.

The story of those who have been supported by JamiiBoro is an inspiration – whether through microfinance program or through her housing program and Levuka, a program for alcoholics. Another amazing initiative is Kaputei Town, a housing initiative for some 2,000 families, that will provide employment, housing, and a safe environment in which to live. Ingrid was able to secure around 290 acres of prime land in Kisaju for this project.

Beyond the conversation of our work over the past 28 years with the poor, two white-haired grandmothers here at the Summit shared stories of our children and grandchildren.

Ingrid has 5 children, some of whom were adopted.  My oldest son and his wife from Vermont are adopting Poojah, an Indian six year old girl who was abandoned in the streets of New Delhi two years ago. She will be my eighth grandchild and will be well loved.  As I encounter street beggars and children again, I will always be reminded of both Ingrid’s work and Poojah’s early years.

Today was a breakthrough!  Since 2002, GreenMicrofinance has been participating and leading panels on microfinance and the environment at various Microcredit Summit gatherings- Bangladesh 2004; Chile 2005, Halifax 2006, and today in Bali. 

During today's session on Microfinance, Their Clients, and Clean Energy: Making a Positive Impact on the Environment there was a definite shift in interest and ‘energy' around the topic.  THE LIGHTS ARE ON!

Craig Wilson from The Foundation for Development Cooperation based in Australia and my colleague, Kathleen Robbins from GreenMicrofinance, provided a macro overview of moving forward with clean energy and the microfinance.   

We then shifted to the local perspective.  Paul Thomas, Founder and Exective Director,  Evangelical Social Action Forum (ESAF), India, and Chitta Ranjan Chaki, Deputy General Manager, Grameen Shakti, Bangladesh, both provided very comprehensive overviews of their clean energy initiatives.  

ESAF in partnership with GreenMicrofinance (and Microenergy International) is developing a clean energy lending program; they recently completed a market survey of 1,200 clients in four States in which they work.  A couple of highlights from the survey include:

• Majority of these people use firewood for cooking purposes; even if they do have LPG connections they prefer to use firewood stoves (comparatively cheaper source)
• Waste generated in each household could be processed to produce renewable clean energy.

One can't help but be impressed with the work of Grameen Shakti, which incorporated in 1996, and which provides energy services in remote rural areas of Bangladesh. GS sells, installs, and maintains solar photovoltaic systems, and has biogas, solar thermal, and wind programs.  

The session was very well attended with about 45 participants from government, NGOs, energy service providers, national banks, advocacy groups, and microfinance institutions.  We invited the group to post on this blog some of their thoughts and questions to further the dialogue on this panel theme.   

From my own perspective, I think we need to clearly identify our vision within the microfinance sector, continue to develop innovative solutions, and promote champions (like Paul Thomas and Chitta Chaki), who will reenergize communities to work together to conserve our natural environment and to promote environmental justice.  

The energy and microfinance presentation went well today.  I opened my talk, reminding people of the ‘bad omens' Professor Yunus sees on the horizon: rising food and fuel prices, slowing economy, climate change and environmental degradation and the estimate that 100 million people are in danger of slipping back into abject poverty unless these issues are addressed successfully.

It was disappointing there weren't more people at the session, but the people who were there were amazing, as is the work Grameen Shakti is doing in Bangladesh and ESAF in India.  The Managing Director, Dipal Barua showed me his daily solar panel installation count, more 300 yesterday.  When I visited Shakti in 2003 they were doing less than 20 installations a day.  There really is a demand for energy!

This afternoon I did interviews with five amazing women; Gita and Silvia from Indonesia, Maree and Rebecca from Australia and Maaike from the Netherlands via Australia.  All had fascinating stories about their current work and their path to the Microcredit Summit.  The discussions ranged far and wide, but focused on renewable energy and microfinance's role in getting clean energy into the hands of the those at the "Base of the Pyramid'!

Dan will be editing these interviews and will have them on the blog shortly!

We had to arrive at the Convention Center an hour early today because of security; it is everywhere!  The President and First Lady of Indonesia were part of the opening ceremony.    While waiting, I had a chance to discussion technology and education with a young woman from Microsoft (I'm not sure why I continue to gravitate to the corporate types), saw a beautiful Indonesian dance performance, heard more of the exotic music of Bali and was reminded with a video, why we are here. 

Jodiman was married at 10 in 1962, had her first child at 15 and was living in abject poverty when she first heard of the Grameen Bank and microfinance in 1980.  She took out her first loan for $10, despite warnings from friends she would be killed by the bank if she couldn't repay the loan, purchased a rice husker and to is still a Grameen client.  Today, she and her children and her grandchildren enjoy a level of prosperity never dreamed of when she first joined Grameen.  A perfect example of why 98%+ of microfinance borrowers are women.

All the opening speakers addressed the current fuel and food crisis in someway but Professor Yunus summed it up the best.  In his comments he told us of the progress that has been made in alleviating poverty, mainly in Asia but also listed "bad omens of terrible things coming up".  These he said include "rising oil and food prices, the slowing economy, climate conditions and environmental degradation."  He then went on to say "microcredit can be a strong help in addressing these issues by extending agricultural credit and focusing on women."

Given the work we've been doing in Haiti with 2^nd generation biofuels (jatropha curcas), I couldn't agree more.  Agriculture policies in the US and EU have caused some of the problem, it is now time for them to be part of the solution. 

As President Yudhoyono said "microcredit is a tool to promote peace, stability and political development" and without a concerted efforts on the part of developed countries, 100 million people are in danger of slipping back into poverty according to the World Bank.   

Flying USA to Bali is one of the longest flights possible on the planet, at about 20 hours in flight. Any further and it's quicker to come around from the other side. It was then great to see a familiar face during the layover in Hong Kong - it turns out Sam Daley-Harris and Eileen White Read of the Microcredit Summit Campaign were also on my flight!

While waiting to process an entry visa, I had a chance to chat with a tourist from Australia about current events. She was excited about Obama, with comparisons to Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy and the possible impact of his campaign. That led to a conversation about microfinance and the difference between 'trickle-up' vs. 'trickle-down' approaches to addressing economic, social, and environmental challenges. Our conversation concluded with the idea that government policy plays a large role, however local actions driven by economic incentives can bring the broadest impact.

After a Rp. 50,000.00 taxi ride (that's $5US) In Bali on the way to lunch with Denise Hughes today we ran into Mr. Bambang Isamawan of Gema PKM, Professor Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank, and Sam Daley-Harris.
  (from left: Katheleen, Mr Isamawan, Professor Yunus, Sam, Elizabeth, and myself)
Tomorrow the summit begins. We're excited to see where microfinance is going. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Stay tuned!