good news stories of our generation

Theme Song of Ending Digital Divides http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN3e7qdQaxY
Story 1 from telephone ladies to http://www.grameensolutions.com

Story 2 how Dr Yunus pop group The Green Children raised money for 2 eyecare social business hospitals

Story 3 how mobile microcredit empowers http://www.jamiibora.org

Story 4 Dr Yunus is interested in how we all can connect the greatest celebrations ever - yes we can unite round the human race to poverty museums. His friends are asking every leader they can reach this question, and you!Muhammad Yunus: A champion of 'Yes, we can‎ - 15 hours agoMr. Yunus had his own "Yes, we can" moment as a young economics ... President Obama should accompany Muhammad Yunus to that Summit in Kenya to join in the ...The Times of Trenton - NJ.com - 3 related articles »
Story 5 Father of microcredit; 2 mothers of microcredits 1 2; son of microcredit
Story 6 - you tell us - The Stories of Our Generation -with thanks to Yes We Can, thegreenchildren.org and yunuscentre.orgwith thanks to www.thegreenchildren.org and www.yunuscentre.org and www.grameencl.com and moderator of dr yunus 69th birthday dialogue & YOU can if she can

I recommend one lists the rules that must never be broken first (others need a definite local adaptation reason) for breaking; within each primary rule there also needs to be a what-else detailing because empowering rules need to be living communally not concrete in stone

MICRO UP SYSTEMS ARE UNIQUE TO WORLD SUSTANABILITY INVESTMENT DESIGNS IF & ONLY IF

1 owned by poorest over generations -ie system transparency and hi-trust = compound consequence driven, never 90 day success measured as anyone including poor might define quarterisation;
poorest actually means those that colonial system (big capital cities) compounds most conflicts around- which means that 1) your micro up model isnt much use unless its going to resolve whatever systemic conflicts are still spinning that poverty; 2) in a particular locality -as in grameen bangladesh - you choose the poorest group whose lifetime depends on communal collaboration - ie in 1970s this was poorest village women and their end poverty goals were very clear- make us income generating to gain respect and free us of such enslaving traditions as dowries, give us a communal centre for each group of 60 women to action learn and communally support each other, but invest the surplus in health and education of our kids especially girl power; bare as grameen's late 1970s model looked it was the perfect knowledge sharing design to evolve and now its digitally connected it is one of the few whole truth (ie gandhian satyagraha) deep 140000 hubs and spoke networks anywhere

(1a there is sometimes a confusion - a micro up model every time it replicates must start again with the poorest in that target area otherwise over time it will become eg banking for the less poor instead of the poorest; however of course after 30 years of mediating micro up system like grameen and brac they are also responsible for sustainably investing (eg vocational education and employment agencies) in the next generations they have brought on; this is perhaps where they use hybrid models not only the micro up model that they keep deisgning round the poorest)

2 must have a positive cashflow model that everyone can see how to work (none of which is ever to be syphoned off outside the local communities or away from the poorest); in most countries a new law is required so that such a micro up organisation can never be tampered with

3 system design to reinvest all surplus in a purpose which of its kind nobody in deep local contexts can come close to beating - often it designs 10 times more economic and more responsible that that service has ever value exchanged before - a success that is judged over time as what compounds round future exponentials rising; by being so simply best and collaborative and open others interested in the same empowerment purpose join it rather than thinking for one second to compete with it;

if we analyse micro up models there are common reasons how they achieve 10 times more economic tehse include:

next to zero marketing costs and often bottom up ownership of whole channel

deprofessionalisation so local people can do most of the work and be educated on very specific practices - para-nurses of eyecare can be trained up in 2 months even if they began as semi-illiterate female teenagers in the vilage

absolutely zero-conflict between all sides- which maximises positive emotional energy- in fact social business models are true knowledge models where the business only sustains growth if its custmers, employees, societies do

4 seeding worldwide transformation: yes we can win war between opposite economics systems -micro up versus macro down - only one of which can sustain humanity lovally to globally if end poverty is to be the networking generation's defining achievement, micro up has a quality certification process that all of the world's deepest micro-ups can be mapped and celebrated - in the united race to poverty museums everywhere; its best to ask worldwide youth to become the umpires of what is and isnt micro up since top down govs are sure as hell not going to regulate that as wall street has proven; micro requires every profession to return to hippocratic oaths; exact opposite system design than the way each global profession for last quarter century and currently is measuring or unfreeing speech around its vested interest as licensed to monopoly rule; the 40 year old gandhi's defining (system whole truth moment 1906 was aha its my profession that is the colonial world system spinning conflict; he mapped how education then media had to be transformed before he could battle my grandad in bombay courts one bar of london barrister to another- and have a 20 year chance of winning- humanity does not have time not to learn from grameen and brac now.

have I forgot any system-defining rule?

chris
put ths mail at http://futurecapitalism.ning.com/forum/topics/yes-we-can

Extracts from summer 2008 interview with Kazi Islam of http://www.grameensolutions.com/ and http://bankabillion.org/ - please note ideas andinnovation interactions for the poor change very fast in Bangladesh and around its worldwide networks - not all of this is current!

Kazi Islam: In emerging countries, what we focus not so much on the technology adoption as the solution adoption. Better yet, we see what we call the technology leap frog- right?

So if you think about the very reason why the mobile technology or the cell phone technology really took off, because the need for communication was so high that your land based infrastructure could not really keep up with that demand of that communication.

When Dr Yunus brought a mobile phone to Bangladesh many people laughed at him, right? People don’t have food to eat and no shirts to wear and you are going to give them – what a cell phone, right?

But today, think about it. Cell phone could not be any more affordable in Bangladesh, okay. Even as a poor country, we have, you know, almost 42 million subscribers. Who’d have thought of that rising exponetial in just ten years?

That's leapfrogging

the land based phone infrastructure is virtually stagnant, but on the other side our mobile subscriber base is growing about 30% annually. Similarly when you think about the banking sector? ..A banking sector example could be a so-called ATM card or even online banking, okay. But in our world, a significant per cent of our population don’t have access to a physical bank. And we only have one per cent of my population has access to the internet. So I am saying that maybe it’s not the ATM card or the online banking that’s going to take off, maybe it’s mobile phone technology, mobile banking technology that I’m talking about that’s going to take off. Do you know what I mean by leapfrogging?

So those are the things that it would be up to us at grameensolutions -as bank of sustainability investments in mobile for the poor - how quickly we can identify a mobile solution and how quickly we can bring it to people, okay?

....

Grameen Solution Centres in many ways is a hub or node of technology services? So what we have done is we have gathered a tremendous amount of information from as many countries as we could. We also have invested, and investigated a tremendous amount of, time learning what are the sustainable models that are working around the globe. And of course given all these information we study the top issues in emerging countries: MICROeducation and MICROhealthcare MICROagriculture and MICROenergy and so on. I’m not saying that I’ll be able to solve everything instantly, but could I focus on our top 10 issues, And and see if I can help solve them through the technology component of it.

On the healthcare I think Grameen has a tremendous focus. And remember the challenge we face today is only 26 doctors for every 100,000 patients in Bangladesh. Another big challenge is the doctor to nurse ratio. In developed countries, I think that ratio is close to one to ten. In Bangladesh it’s,one to three or one to four, so we have to you know, build our nurse population as well.

But we are saying, why stop there? Why couldn’t there be a health workforce who are not a degreed doctor, but are capable of delivering various services very efficiently. We cannot pump out doctors, you know, beacuse we have few medical universities in Bangladesh.

Again, by building medical universities is not going to be our immediate solution. So while we are working on doctors’ population there also has to be an effort to reduce the dependency on doctors. So I’m saying that that has to be done through technology and technology has to play a role in it.

Why not train health workers to expect to be sent to a remote village where I give him a technology device. And that device may have multiple inputs to it : so he does the EKG, he does the insulin level, the blood sugar level or he,monitors the, the pulse, or whatever.

The moment he turns the device on in a remote village it gives him some generic questions on the patient. What is your name, your father’s name ?. What is your health conditions? Takes the basic information down and that information with patients permission could be beamed up in our national database on health conditions.

And after that, when he comes to the diagnosis part of it, what is your problem, right? So the patient says that, you know I have a pain in my left leg and based on the moment he enters that information the system itself will give him the questions and help him narrow down the diagnosis.
Maybe it’s a very simple thing in that hey, you just take a pain medications, you know, here is the Paracetamol, or Tylenol, you take. Or our healthwokler comes to a point that it is beyond him. Could there be output at the time on the device to a voice call to a doctor nearby. Again, one of the outputs could be a video link to a doctor or hospital nearby. Could there be a output that goes to another computer server with all these relevant informations built in, right?

So I’m talking about the technology device, multiple inputs and outputs -okay? In fact I have a device right here that I brought from US that does ultrasound. It’s right in the backpack over there in the black backpack you have is a handheld device. In Bangladesh ultrasound machines are not yet available in the villages. But how soon will it be before you put the ultrasound machine in your backpack and go to a remote village and do the ultrasound on a pregnant woman. So I’m saying that we have to bring technology to people, okay? ...

www.socialenterpriseawards.org.uk/news of a major UK social enterprise competition http://futurecapitalism.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-national-social-enterprise reminds me one of the number 1 tasks that any friends of dr yunus and bangladesh can do is hunt out networks who are in some way or another cataloguing social enterprises and asking their coordinators whether they are willing to make sustainable models - as governed by the bangladeshi method identifiable from non-sustainable social enterprises;

SYSTEM FAILURES 09/10 humanity's year of unprecdented crisis
as you may recall the first chapter of dr yunus master book (2008) on sustainability investment went through every major 20th century organsiational typology from the west and explained why it was not designed to compomud/sustain an end to poverty- the book then went on to publish the world's first mathematical model (bangladeshi social business) for compounding an end to poverty- so there really is little point for those who want to work with dr yunus and bangladesh to get drowned in networks with 1% sustainable social business and 99% other stuff unless we can quickly get to the segment of sustainable models we want to learn with and help replicate; this is where aid has gone oh so non-empowering, and the same syndrome has made microcredit knowhow transfers very difficult unless you are many years into knowing who's microcredit who;

I would suggest that one reason why the UK has with a few exceptions not helped dr yunus as much as eg france or germany is this systemic misunderstanding - both germany and france/monaco will be launching major social business funds in the next 6 months or so but as yet we don't appear to have one such UK gravity for knowing that we are looking at true social businesses

Dear Dr. Hari Srinivas

I just came across your superb web site and its microcredit resources http://www.gdrc.org/icm/index.html . and oceans http://www.gdrc.org/oceans/a-ocean.html
and spanish edition http://www.gdrc.org/icm/spanish/spanish.html

Could I introduce ourselves from http://yunusforum.net in case there are any ways we can interconnect microeconomic networks particularly those using bangladeshi sustainability investment modelling (which dr yunus publishes under the names social business and future of capitalism)

My understanding is that yunus forums is an intercity collaboration and network mapping process that came about from citizen demand during the Nobel prize primarily from 3 areas japan, california and Mostofa Zaman who is a Bangaldesh villager but who sofia and I met soon after he started studying at London university at end of 1996. In 2008 we linked together 10000 dvds given away of youtube type good news waving round grameen http://yunus10000.com We just hosted dr yunus 69th birthday dialogues http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8130130.stm - our most eminent blogger at these celebrations paul rose is also the BBC's oceans films presenter and is a leader of the microenergy awards network http://ashdenawards.org

other Yforums seem to have been amalgamated into different networks - eg some dr yunus japanese partners are now listed at http://www.muhammadyunus.org/new/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=52&itemid=168 though I don't have a full map of Dr Yunus links to supporters in japan, and would live any introductions

Mostofa's latest dr yunus project is to identify 5000 youth ambassadors connecting into one network of young people whose lives are most likely to support micro up. Is this something you could advise on out of japan?

My Father Norman Macrae http://www.normanmacrae.com wrote from The Economist for 40 years on micro up enetrepreneurial revolutions and was awarded The Emperors Rising Sun with Gold Mars. Dad believes that Yunus is just about the only true microeconomist left on the world stage calling for peoples reforms to global banking and other macroeconomic follies, So I am interested in helping connect Japanese and wordlwide supporters of Dr Yunus.

chris macrae washington dc 301 881 1655 yunusuni.com = obamauni.com

BACKGROUND ON GDRC
It was on 25 May 2001 that GDRC, the Global Development Research Center, went online.

GDRC began in a very humble small way in early 1995, when the predessesor of the current Virtual Library on Microcredit - the Informal Credit Homepage - was launched. The NGO Cafe came soon after, and with the launch of the Urban Environmental Management Research Initiative (UEMRI) in 1997, the beginnings of a comprehensive set of programmes were underway.

Eventually, the many overlapping and intersecting themes, in different web servers, were consolidated into five spheres - Environment, Urban, Community, Economy, and Information - within which the 15 programmes were laid out. And GDRC was born as [www.gdrc.org] on 25 May 2001.


GDRC Timeline
April 1995: The 'Informal Credit Homepage (ICM)' was launched. This was the first single-issue 'homepage' launched at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This was developed as a part of the Ph.D. research of GDRC's coordinator, Hari Srinivas, at TITech.
June 1996: The NGO Cafe was added to the ICM pages, reflecting a non-financial focus of the work being carried out for the ICM pages.
November 1997: Young Planners participating in the World Planning Congress in Ogaki, Japan decided to launch the Urban Environmental Management Research Initiative (UEMRI). A distinct urban bias of programmes and research work began to manifest itself. This eventually became a core focus for future programmes - emphasizing the local and community dimension of issues being discussed.
1998: With the launch of the International Year of Oceans in 1998, activities and research work being carried out under the themes of small islands, coastal areas and oceans in general were consolidated into a set of webpages under the theme, "Oceans, Coasts and Small Islands". These pages were initially developed within UEMRI.
1998-1999: Emphasizing the need for good global governnace became a key policy objective, promting the in-depth exploration of the issue, particularly its relevance and implications at the city or urban level. Resources developed for training programmes on urban governance and papers/reports written on the topic were consolidated into a set of pages on 'Urban Governance'. This was also set up as a part of UEMRI.
1998: The NGO Cafe, which was so far a part of the Informal Credit Homepage, became independent and was launched as a separate programme.
1999: Most of the research and capacity building activities above benefitted from and were primarily carried out over the internet - gopher, web, email et al. Valuable lessons were drawn from these activities on information management principles. These lessons were packaged and presented as a series of webpages on 'Information Systems'. Issues related to information management, knowledge management, information technology etc. were covered.
2001: GDRC is born! The different programmes resident in different university servers were consolidated and merged into one organization carrying out programmes in five spheres - Environment, Urban, Community, Economy, and Information. And GDRC was born as [www.gdrc.org] on 25 May 2001.
2001:The outputs on (a) Urban Governance, and (b) Oceans, Coasts and Small Islands, were separated from the UEMRI pages, and made into distinct programmes of GDRC. The Information Systems pages were also split into three parts, becoming the GDRC programmes on (a) Information and Communication Technologies, (b) Knowledge Management, and (c) Information Design. At the same time, new programmes on Sustainable Business, Technology Transfer, Informal Sector, Environmental Decision-Making, and Sustainable Development, were also launched.



Over the years, GDRC has grown steadly both in terms of its programmatic outputs and the number of virtual visitors it has served. In December 2005, it served an average of 4,500 visitors a day, downloading a total of 28 GB of information during the month. This has now increased to 7,500 visitors a day in 2007, with almost 70 GB of information downloaded every day.

In order to maintain its independence and flexibility in programmatic focus, GDRC has remained a virtual organization, serviced by a network of world-wide 'virtual fellows' and operated on a voluntaryt basis. GDRC has used only personal funds for its operation, and has neither sought nor received any external funds for its management.

If you have any additional questions on GDRC please send an email to the GDRC Coordinator, Dr. Hari Srinivas -

there is something really great for me about grameen that this educational debate may be at the heart of
I love grameen for its minimum system interventions; conversely I am bothered by "wouldnt it be lovely to have this?" if this could risk being hi-cost and not central to the core poorest members
If I am right - and please blame me not grameen if I have got some details wrong - once opened a branch of about 5 people serve 4000 members at about 70 village centre locations each of which a branch member visits once a week to do the transactions; the branch staff are therefore already pretty busy
The main training (in terms of extra staff time comes at the 5 day paulo freire type induction of new groups of about 5 (often illiterate) poorest of the poor; once inducted they go to a centre where 60 people are communally organising and sharing peer to peer knowledge as well as keeping an eye out on whether each new member has chosen an activity that there is enough need for in the community to be income generating
Your challenge if you want to find a grameen compatible service for developing business acumen is how to design its cost structure to sustain itself , ie not add cost to any of the poorest of the poor services. One of DR Y's most persisent slogans is the less poor will drive out the poorest from any banking system design unless you always proactively ask does this suggested new concept benefit the poorest
One of my favourite grameen add-on products - though not training as such - is http://www.grameenkalyam.org/ - what health insurance can do you do for $2 per year per family. Secret 1 is to test and test and test small until you have found a low cost design- again I may have the details wrong but roughly what design grameenkalyam does is one kalyam centre serves 20 bank branches where it aims to prove its subscription worth to at least half of families -that's probably $80000 of annual budget. It is staffed by one doctor and 2 para-nurses whose job is to correctly diagnose what illness patients present themselves with as well as to relay early warning trends etc. Any solution to the diagnosed illness is an extra cost but kalyam aims to know the best value solution (see also how http://worldcongress.com/ organises extremely affordable poster competitions, and hilary clinton enjoys kalyam briefings!), and over time kalyam centres can test our remote technology or become feeded centres to the green children eye hospitals. They are therefore the system core to build the world's lowest cost rural national health system but to get anywhere near that they depend on what social businesses we all can connect in through almost free knowledge transfers. A crucial point is that kalyam sees itself as planting something that may take 15 years to or more to add anything like what you might regard as a full service but it has started in the minimalist member sustaining way. It has no fat and is impossible to pork barrel! This is also why we should never ask that poorest members try out something that is going to be expensive to trial.