World Ark Magazine - March/April 2009 - (Page 13) The dirt pathway leading into akandalamuni Village was flanked with women waiting for visitors; they raised a highpitched ululating cry as we approached. a tiny old woman blew a long tone on a conch-shell horn while younger ones waved incense and daubed our foreheads with red powder. “welcome! You have wasted your time coming to see us!” they said in a ritual chant, waving bone-thin arms clinking with bangle bracelets. The 15-member akandalamuni women’s club led us between their mud houses across the swept-clay ground, which is kept bare to discourage cobras from entering the doorways. we sat on rugs spread under a tree and listened to their story. like millions of women in South asia, they started their own microcredit group. attending twice-monthly meetings and putting two rupees per month (about four cents) into a joint savings account qualified them for small loans, collateralized by group guarantee. This year they borrowed enough to rent a five-acre plot for growing sugar cane, from which they share the proceeds. in microcredit groups, the first meeting of each month is usually devoted to finances, the second to “programs.” most of these women could not read or write and wondered what a program might entail. They’d heard of a village on the river, called Bisailo, whose women’s club held community self-education classes. They walked there to find out more. The women of Bisailo happily volunteered to pass on something they called “cornerstones training”—a series of workshops in accountability, gender and caste equity, cooperation, farming skills, sanitation and nutrition. The women bonded, and later when monsoons flooded the river village, the akandalamuni women’s club brought them food and garden seeds. it might seem an ordinary tale of cooperation, but in the context of indian society it holds a few surprises. first, the riverside village was inhabited by so-called Untouchables, rarely visited by outsiders. helping others in need was a new experience for nearly all these women, who had virtually nothing of their own. finally, no outside development agency had lured the akandalamuni club into communityimprovement classes (or mingling with lower-caste women) by promising material aid. They did it on their own. Saving money was a start, but they wanted more. None of it surprised Sushant Verma, coordinator for the cooperative outreach of india, a heifer project partner. he knows these w w w. h e i f e r. o r g villagers, whose motives are often underestimated by the economic thinking of outsiders. “programs that offer material support only, in a short amount of time, often fail. here, 99 percent of the work is what we call capacity-building.” elsewhere in the world, the word that currently dominates global development conversation is “microfinance.” in the model created by muhammad Yunus and the grameen Bank, microfinance extends credit to poor people who would normally be turned away. By taking an oath and attending meetings, members assume collective responsibility for loans. The lenders target women, who have proven likely to repay loans and use the earnings for family well-being. research in india also shows women are more flexible at learning new kinds of Women share work. according to The Times of India, goats at a microfinance has helped some Passing on the 15 million people in South asia rise Gift ceremony from poverty. Yunus won the Nobel in an Orissa prize for his pioneering economic village. model, and the U.N. designated 2005 the international Year of microcredit. former U.N. Secretary-general kofi annan predicted microcredit would create jobs, give families access to health care and send children to school. Supporters hail it as the development tool that could end poverty in the 21st century; it is widely endorsed by mainstream development agencies and even offers investors the feel-good option of profitable philanthropy. Social welfare and equality are presumed to follow naturally from the growth of free markets; a report from the world Bank in 2001 suggested as much, downplaying the specific need to address gender issues in poverty-amelioration programs. The report drew questions march/apri l 2009 | worl d ark 13 http://www.heifer.org
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