File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/96-10-27.132, message 108


Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:25:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Blancato <tblan-AT-telerama.lm.com>
Subject: Action: Microcredit for 100 million! (fwd)




Anyone have any thoughts on microcredit and rhizomes? BTW, Yunus' 
approach has been hightly effective in Bangledesh, where the Grameen bank 
(the "bank of the poor") uses this bottom-up strategy coupled with what I 
think is a very strong "nonviolence" ethos. This is the kind of thing 
that could be exemplary nonviolent thoughtaction projects for students in 
an "academy" as per recent discussions, coupled with extensive 
philosophical treatment. Microcredit can be thought of as a kind of 
material deconstruction of the "worldhood" of the World Bank (heh). I've 
developed preliminary projectsion for how to do a "thoughtaction" that 
would develop precisely this, and owing to the general ground of 
thoughtaction's being developed in certain ways, this "deconstruction" 
would not simply involved "materialism" ala Marx, but would open up into 
"thought", a "thought for The People" (shudder!) in narrow PAR 
(participatory action research) frameworks and broader nvta (nonviolent 
thoughtaction) frameworks.

Tom B.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 18:47:15 GMT
From: Joel Rubinstein <jrubinstein-AT-igc.apc.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list ACTIV-L <ACTIV-L-AT-MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU>
Subject: Action: Microcredit for 100 million!

              Act now to support Microcredit Summit

Background

     Microcredit makes available very small loans to poor people
so that they can start or expand tiny self-employment business
ventures. It is one of the most effective means of reducing
poverty worldwide. Microcredit is now aiding 8-10 million poor
people in the developing countries, and tens of thousands more in
industrialized countries. An international Microcredit Summit
will be held in Washington, DC, February 2-4, 1996. The goal of
the Summit is to reach 100 million of the world's poorest
families with credit for self-employment and other business and
financial services by the year 2005. The President's attendance
will greatly enhance the prominence of the Summit and help ensure
the participation of other world leaders.

Strategy

     Our letters to the editor urging President Clinton and
Senator Dole to commit now to attending the Summit will reinforce
the same request being made through other channels. Our letters
will also serve to inform readers and the media about the Summit
and its goal.

Starting a Revolution

     The stereotype of poor people is that they are lazy, lacking
in skills, and terrible credit risks. While teaching economics at
a Bangladesh university, Professor Muhammad Yunus began looking
at the lives of the poor in the villages around his campus, and
discovered a completely different reality. He found people who
were highly skilled and hardworking. What kept them poor, he
concluded, was a lack of capital, which made them dependent on
moneylenders and middlemen and tied them to exorbitant interest
rates.

      Yunus began an experiment: lending small amounts to the
poor to allow them to start and expand their tiny businesses.
Thanks to his persistence and clarity of vision, this experiment
grew to become the Grameen Bank. Today Grameen Bank has two
million owner- borrowers, almost all of whom are very poor women.
Loans average $140, though first loans are much smaller, and the
on-time repayment rate is more than 97%. Small though the loans
may be, having access to credit sparks a profound change in the
lives of the borrowers and their families, often allowing them to
break out of the cycle of poverty.

     While Grameen was growing in Bangladesh, similar programs
were beginning and expanding elsewhere in Asia, Latin America,
Africa, and even in industrialized countries like the US and
Canada. The question, as Dr. Yunus likes to say, is no longer
whether poor people are "credit- worthy," but whether banks are
"people-worthy."

Microcredit Summit

     With solid evidence of microcredit's remarkable success, and
with credit for self-employment reaching 8 to 10 million poor
people on five continents, a group of non-governmental
organizations has taken on a bold goal and conceived an event to
move toward that goal: the first-ever Microcredit Summit, to be
held in Washington, DC on February 2-4, 1997. The Summit will
launch a campaign to ensure that 100 million of the world's
poorest families, especially the women of those families, are
receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and
business services by 2005. Achieving this goal of 100 million
families would mean that with five people per family, nearly half
a billion people half of the world's absolute poor could benefit
>from microcredit by 2005.

Microcredit in the USA

     Of the 100 million poor people the Summit seeks to assist,
an estimated four million will reside in industrialized
countries, and many of those will be in the US. Although
conditions in Chicago are very different from those in
Bangladesh, microcredit is spreading rapidly in this country,
with several hundred programs currently serving an estimated
total of 40,000 to 50,000 clients. A modest investment in support
of self- employment has the potential to create far more jobs
than the well-publicized incentives used to lure large
businesses. Over the next several years, it should be feasible to
create as many as two million new very small enterprises, many
employing one or two people besides the owner. These jobs could
prove crucial under the new welfare law, which requires states to
move poor people from welfare to work or lose federal grants.

U.S. Leadership Crucial

     The success of any international summit meeting is highly
dependent on the level of US participation. When President Bush
announced that he would attend the 1990 World Summit for
Children, the news encouraged other world leaders to attend. That
helped make the children's summit the largest gathering of heads
of state and government ever held up to that time. The chances
for a successful Microcredit Summit would increase greatly if the
next President of the United States declared his intention now to
attend personally and to have a high-level U.S. delegation
participating. Members of the House and Senate can also play a
key role in legislative follow-up to the Summit by joining the
Microcredit Summit Council of Parliamentarians.

ACTION: Write a letter to the editor.

     1. Refer to a recent article in the paper about the US or
global economies, welfare reform, or the elections.
     2. Explain the difference that access to credit is making in
the lives of many poor people.
     3. Tell readers about the Microcredit Summit and its goal of
reaching 100 million families with credit for self- employment by
the year 2005.
     4. Urge Senator Dole and President Clinton to commit now to
attending the Summit, if elected.
     5.  Urge your members of Congress to join the Council of
Parliamentarians of the Microcredit Summit, or, if they have
already joined, acknowledge them in your letter.

U.S. senators on the Council of Parliamentarians:

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)      Patty Murray (D-WA)

U.S. representatives on the Council of Parliamentarians:

Robert Andrews (D-NJ)     Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Howard Berman (D-CA)      Robert Matsui (D-CA)
Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY)  Marty Meehan (D-MA)
Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)      Constance Morella (R-MD)
George Brown (D-CA)       Bill Orton (D-UT)
Bob Filner (D-SD)         Floyd Spence (R-SC)
Elizabeth Furse (D-OR)    John Spratt (D-SC)
Benjamin Gilman (R-NY)    Charles Taylor (R-NC)
Amo Houghton (R-NY)       Bruce Vento (D-MN)
Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)

=======================================================================Microcredit Summit, February 2-4, 1997      http://igc.apc.org/results/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Working to ensure that 100 million of the world's poorest families,
especially the women, are receiving credit for self-employment by 2005.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
RESULTS Educational Fund                        microcredit-AT-igc.apc.org
236 Massachusetts Ave NE #300                     phone: (202) 543-9340
Washington DC 20002                                 fax: (202) 546-3228
=======================================================================


   

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