UP | uncultured project

The Beggar Children

We ten interns had more or less just landed in Uganda.  It was Day Three, and we were touring Jinja on foot.

Imagine.  A parade of mzungus meandering around downtown, fingers pointing, and heads on swivels.  With stomachs full of matooke and rice, we took our time digesting as we strolled along the broken sidewalk.  Shopkeepers called out, hoping that their wares could draw our attention.  Boda-boda drivers offered us rides on their bicycles or mopeds.  A third group called us too.  Three small children, around five or seven years old, quietly implored, “Sirs, 100?”  They were asking for a meager 100 shillings, and we had just spent 8000 on lunch.  Surely we could spare the equivalent of 6 American cents.

Before we could respond, our program director shooed them away in their native language.  Many of the interns were heartbroken.  I know I was.  Here is a little kid, malnourished and poorly clothed, and all he wanted was a nickel.  That’s not too much to ask.  I could have tossed him the coin and moved on.

But, as our program director explained, it is not about the amount of money.  It is the principle.  You can only effect serious change by striving for sustainability.  What will that boy do when we leave?  Who will care for him then?  Any change that you try to initiate must be able to last without your input.

It was only the third day, and I felt like I was already being taught how to rationalize away the most vulnerable members of society.

Continue reading ‘The Beggar Children of Main Street’

This past Wednesday, I went out to a rural village in the Kamuli region called Buwaiswa to register grandmothers for my microfinance program.  There were 57 grannies that came to be registered, which was good news.  The bad news is that some of them openly expressed complete disinterest; they said they were just there for the free food.

Since the grannies are more vulnerable than even your typical microfinance recipient, we give loans to groups rather than individuals.  These groups of 4-6 work together to develop an activity that will give them some sort of disposable income.  The groups are placed into “teams,” which help ensure loan repayment.  Only one group per team is allowed to have a loan at any given time, so a group has the incentive to repay the loan so that their friends can get help as well.

We allowed the grannies to group, and then we grouped them into teams.  We took aside the first group from each team and interviewed them about what income-generating activity they wanted to pursue.  Two groups expressed an interest in moving from subsistence farming to farming-for-business.  One group wanted to raise and sell animals.  One group wanted to split time between selling secondhand clothes and operating a pay-phone.

After we have this information, we will determine what they need to get started.  Those startup costs become the loan principle.

After interviewing them, my work for the week was finished.  My host organization, OGLM, runs an orphanage in Buwaiswa and there are about 50 kids there full-time.  I stayed for two nights in the guest room of that orphanage.

It was about eleven o’clock on my first night when there came a pounding on my door.  I opened it up, and about 15 of the orphans were standing there.  The oldest beckoned and said, “We would like to sing for you,” so I followed him over to where they had set up drums.  I sat down, they brought me bread and boiled water (it doesn’t get any better than that when you are worried about food-borne disease), and they played and sang and danced for me.  It was the first time I’ve really sat back and said, “Holy crap, I’m in Africa.”

The next day, we went to ten different schools in the area to check up on the AIDS orphans that OGLM is sponsoring.  There are about 20 kids per school that have their school fees, scholastic materials and uniforms paid for by OGLM.  So, every once in a while we drop by unannounced to make sure that they are still attending class.

When I got back on Friday, I rested up a bit and then got to writing reports.  In order to get more funding from FSD, my parent NGO, I have to write a ten-page report and developing an accompanying project budget to show that the money will be used responsibly.  The absolute final deadline for the proposal is this Friday, and I find out if I am approved by Monday, so wish me luck.

I think since I am mentioning microfinance so much in my posts that I should expand on it a little for those who have not encountered it before.  Microfinance was pioneered by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor from Bangladesh.  What Dr. Yunus did was to take traditional banking and transform some of the assumptions so that it helped the poor rather than excluded them.

There are a few problems with traditional banking that Dr. Yunus overcame in his quest to become “Banker to the Poor” and win the Nobel Prize doing it.  For instance, the typical loan process at a bank involves the giving of collateral. Banks do not wish their borrowers to fail repaying loans, so banks demand that borrowers present proof of repayment ability.  Usually, we see borrowers put up houses as collateral in America.  However, this process has the side effect of excluding the poor, since they have very little collateral to put up.  Also, banks are traditionally interested only in giving loans either with large principle amounts or large interest rates.  It is not profitable to earn small interest on a loan that is only $100 in size, given the operating costs that go with granting a loan.

But Dr. Yunus found ways to avoid these problems and make credit accessible to the poor.  Instead of collateral, he demanded something different: community backing.  If someone wants to get a loan, they must first create a credit group — a group of people that all agree to back up the loan.  These people are there for support during the loan process, and they are unable to receive a loan until the first has been repaid.  Thus, the incentives to repay come not from the giving of collateral, but from community ties.  Dr. Yunus also found ways to give small loans at small interest rates.  By standardizing the loan process and minimizing the screening costs, he was actually able to give extremely small loans at rates barely above the inflation rate, and still even turn a profit!

Granted, Dr. Yunus’ will be the first to tell you that his bank, the Grameen Bank, is not a profit-maximizing entity.  It is what he calls a “social business.”  If it makes a profit, that is all well and good; however, its measure of success comes not from the bottom line, but from the number of people that it helps escape poverty.  And by that measure, it has performed quite well.  Today, there are over seven million poor people in Bangladesh who have loans from Grameen Bank.  To date, it has loaned the equivalent of $6 billion (U.S.), and the repayment rate is an astonishing 98.6 percent.  Bangladesh is currently the only country in the world on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals, and that is in no small part due to the Grameen Bank and Dr. Yunus’ many other social businesses.

That brief explanation should be enough to understand anything that I address in future posts.  If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Yunus and his development of the microfinance model, read his autobiography Banker to the Poor. If you are interested in microfinance and social business as it stands today, I recommend his second book, Creating a World without Poverty, which looks more towards the future.

Okay, so it’s not the Matt from this blog. We know where that Matt is – Uganda. This video is about Matt Harding and I just love it. This is actually the latest version of this video – he’s traveled around the world doing this twice before.

It’s such a simple, heart-warming, and touching video. It says so much without saying a word. It’s actually Matt’s videos that were a source of inspiration for my first YouTube episode. What does dancing around the world have to do with ending global poverty? Well, as Dr. Sachs said (and I quoted in my first video), we share a common human bond. You can overcome the barriers of race, religion, and language with simple generosity.

But, as Matt’s videos shows, dancing works too.

It’s very easy for blogs to be nothing more than words on a screen. It’s especially easy for a blog focused on important issues like global poverty to come off sounding like meaningless rhetoric. Paying it forward! Changing the conversation! These things are meaningless unless there is action, events, and changes attached to them. It’s thanks to Kathy Ward and her non-profit organization (Nari Jibon) that I’ve been able to see first hand the power of the words that I type on my computer screen.

A few months back, my video about the Young Hardworking Poor of Rural Bangladesh got featured on the YouTube.com global website. Thousands of people started looking at my site – some wondering how to get involved. I wrote a quick post and recommended a few places people could go (Nari Jibon being one of them). As much as I’d hoped that someone might be inspired to “pay it forward”, the pragmatist in me didn’t think it very likely.

Boy was I surprised.

That video eventually made its way to Shaina. Shaina is an undergrad at Florida State University. Little did I know that she had checked out my website, found the post about how to get involved, and got in touch with Kathy at Nari Jibon. Shaina came to Bangladesh on her own dime – and like me – is staying in Dhaka with help from her family in Bangladesh. Unlike me, her two month stay in Bangladesh is definitely a two month stay. FSU awaits her back in August.

The day I met Shaina and learned about how she was inspired to come to Bangladesh was also my opportunity to meet Kathy Ward for the first time. Kathy has been reading this blog for the longest time. I think she was reading this blog before there was even a single video up on YouTube. Meeting her was especially significant for me because not only has she been a long time supporter, but she’s also been able to see how this project and how I have changed over time.

It’s friends like Kathy that have made it possible to see how my blog can make a real difference. It’s also friends like Kathy that keep me honest and make sure – no matter how many YouTube honors, website hits, and video views I get – I never forget why I came here and started this project.

[And as a sidenote, there were also a lot of weird coincidences which kept reminding me of Matt during my meeting with Kathy. Kira (the lady in the far right in the picture) used to live in Uganda before coming to Bangladesh. She was delightfully surprised when she found out this blog was expanding to Uganda. And Shaina is from Florida just like Matt. Small world, eh?]

40! Forty! That’s how many YouTube honors the latest video has. Wow.

Complete list after the jump. Thanks to everyone who made this happen.

Continue reading ‘International YouTube Honors Bonanza’

So…

• Yesterday, I had my glasses started to fall apart due to a lost and missing screw.
• Earlier today, I dropped my external microphone right onto concrete.
• And, just a few minutes ago, I accidentally smashed the bathroom door on my middle finger. My finger is has now turned a cartoonish purple and has swelled to almost twice it’s size.

Now, any one of these things could have stopped this project right then and there. But, as luck would have it:

• I found an optician in Dhaka that was able to repair my glasses – and did so for free.
• Aside from a scrape, the external microphone seems to be working just fine. VideoMics are tough.
• And, the real reason I’m typing this blog post is to see how well I can type with a swelled up purple middle finger. So far so good

So it seems like Murphy’s Law is still in effect – but hey, hopefully I’ll be able to handle whatever else comes my way.

[Update - I just checked the date. That explains everything. Friday the 13th.]