RELATIONSHIPS AMONG PAPERS IN THIS VOLUME
Louis Garvin

Relationships Between Projects

Two Birds With One Loan: The Grameen Bank's Impact on Population Growth in Bangladesh is a research project completed as part of a class (SNRE 545) taught by Sandra Arlinghaus and William Drake. This project will be combined with others from the class into a single monograph. This short paper examines relationships between the projects.

Since the mid-1980s, people have been travelling to Bangladesh to learn more about Professor Yunus' "experiment" with microcredit. In 1991, a network of organizations trying to replicate the Grameen model was formed named CASHPOR (Credit And Savings for the Hard-core POoR). In 1992, the Grameen Trust was added to the Grameen Family of Organizations to assist replication efforts in other countries. The Grameen Bank has continued to demonstrate the power of microcredit to alleviate poverty and has captured the world's attention and imagination. In 1997, over 2900 people attended the Microcredit Summit in Washington, D.C., representing 1500 organizations from 137 countries. The summit participants plan to extend the reach of microcredit around the world and have launched a campaign to reach 100 million of the world's poorest families by 2005. (Microcredit Summit, webpage).

Professor Gibbons, CASHPOR's Executive Trustee, believes that the Grameen model should be changed to fit local cultures and needs, but that certain core elements must be kept to ensure success. (Todd, 1996) These elements are:

Using this definition, the use of microcredit to solve problems addressed by other class research projects is not always clear. For example, Martha Masterman describes the need for cooperatives for local farmers to give them better access to market their products. Farming cooperatives are not in the narrow definition of microcredit given by Gibbons, however. It is not clear how microcredit could help the street children whose plight is described by Chandra Sivakumar, because children do not fit within the defined target and structure of microcredit programs. On the other hand, the Grameen Bank has itself been expanding beyond its basic microcredit program into new technology and business development programs. Grameen's example shows that variations are possible which deviate from the parameters described by Gibbon. Perhaps solutions based on microcredit could be developed to specifically address the issues raised by Masterman and Sivakumar.

Of the other class projects, Mark Schmidt and Christina Welter's work on Uganda shows the most promise for the application of microcredit. Schmidt describes the lack of any work available for women as the main factor leading them to work as prostitutes. This high level of prostitution has been a major contributor to the AIDS epidemic that has ravaged the country. Welter points out the low status of women as contributing to Uganda's lack of movement towards a stable and prosperous society. Microcredit can provide employment for women and raise their status is society. This focus on women has a positive rippling effect on family health, education, and economic and societal stability, all of which is desperately needed in Uganda.

Microcredit is only one tool to alleviate poverty. Natalie Henry's analysis of Mexico describes the maquiladora program, in which foreign individuals or businesses can establish a wholly owned operation in Mexico for the manufacture of export products. The maquiladora program forms a stark contrast to microcredit as practiced by the Grameen Bank. Most maquiladora factories use foreign management, so the only gains for the Mexican people are wage labor jobs. Microcredit builds local ownership of assets and strengthens indigenous economies. The maquiladora program forces people to move to the factories along the United States/Mexico border, into areas without a stable social structure and without the proper physical infrastructure to support them. Microcredit gives people the freedom to control their own work in their current communities. Maquiladoras provide much needed jobs and foreign currency for Mexico, but microcredit is a better strategy for developing countries to build strong communities and long term independence.

Sujata Narayan and Jennifer Talbot discuss the development of ecotourism in Costa Rica and Niger. Several comparisons between ecotourism and microcredit can be made:

Two of the other projects raise interesting questions for future research: Return