My New Adventure

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This trip is going to be a bit different than my last trip for a few reasons.

The first reason is that I am not going to stay in the same location for the full time. I plan to visit three different areas for separate purposes.

My first stop which I expect will be about a month is Dhaka Bangladesh. What drew me to this location is the concentration of micro loan programs that are based here. I am visiting BRAC. It was begun in 1970's and is thought to be the creator of micro lending. Around the same time Grameen Bank was formed in Bangladesh with a similar focus of micro loans. Many people are more familiar with Grameen Bank because the founder won the Nobel Prize in 2014 and wrote the book Banker to the Poor. I found it very intriguing that the first NOT for profit and fFOR profit institutions offering micro loans both started in Bangladesh.

I will likely share more about Grameen Bank later, but for now I will focus on BRAC. This NGO is one of the largest non profits in the world employing over 90,000 people, with 70% of those employees being women. They work in 64 districts in Bangladesh and 11 countries around the world. BRAC has many services from disaster relief, medical education, refugee services just to name a few. My focus will be micro lending and the business/financial education provided to the women to help their business to succeed.

While I am not normally interested in an organization of this size I thought there was a lot I could learn from BRAC to improve my own micro lending projects.

BRAC's microcredit collateral-free loans are offered to mostly poor rural women who own no land. The loans allow them to generate income to feed and education their children. Since1970 BRAC has provided almost $2 billion in loans with 95% of the customers being women. They have a repayment rate of 98% percent which they attribute to their wrap around services to support the women and help their businesses to succeed.

In the late 1970s BRAC founded a retail string to market and distribute many of the products made by these small businesses. This increases the women's orders and also gives BRAC a source of self sustaining income.

Most of the work BRAC does takes place in the country side of Bangladesh or in other countries. Because of this my time here will be more focused on learning than doing. But, since I like to keep busy and feel that I am contributing, I am looking for some NGOs that are working in the outskirts of Dhaka that I might be able to spend some time working with their clients.

Dhaka is ranked number one for the highest population density in 2022, with 30,093 residents per square kilometer. I will be living in the newer part of the city as it is very close to BRAC. Rush hour traffic can last hours so being able to walk to the office is important. While the area I live in is very busy I am told that Old Dhaka is a whole other ballgame.

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Comments

[Mari Frick]

Hi!
You're off again!! Sounds like another interesting trip! Safe travels!