[Dialogue] Miracle Villages in Kenya

Tue Mar 9 09:13:15 CST 2010

Leah and I are doing great.  We have three daughters and three grandsons, all live on Queen Anne hill in Seattle.  I will pass this on to Randy Williams who is a new board member of the ICA.  His passion is pulling the NGOs together.  Randy and I did a think tank for the Pentagon in which they wanted to use open source to predict human and natural disasters and coordinate NGO in response instead of letting the situation get out of hand and calling for military intervention.  

Keep in touch.

Lee

On Mar 8, 2010, at 11:55 PM, Don Hinkelman wrote:

> Hi Evelyn and Lee,       [just got a bounced message that my attached file was too big--so here is the message again without a file]
> 
> Nice to hear from you all.  I am on sabbatical at the University of Melbourne finishing a thesis on "blending technologies in school classrooms".  It focuses on open source software, face-to-face technologies (read: ToP), and global sharing of teaching materials among teachers.  Our family is returning to Hokkaido, Japan in a few weeks.  My two boys (5 and 7) will miss the Catholic school they attend and participate in the 'Make Jesus Real' program.  Never thought this Methodist would be learning to be both Catholic and Buddhist at the same time.  :-)
> 
> Back to the Grameen Bank.http://www.grameen-info.org/  Yes, they are the world's largest NGO, and could become one of the world's largest organizations/groups if they keep growing. Their secret is that every social program has an economic model. Every program (health, education, banking, fishing) has micro-payments built into it. Grameen is not-for-profit, but they do build in "profit" structurally into every venture, so that it has long term economic sustainability. They are not-for-profit in the sense that there are no stockholders who own the company and must be paid dividends.  An example is the "Telephone Lady" venture of the 1990s.  In order to give women jobs, they built a loan scheme for each village to have one "Telephone Lady" buy a mobile phone.  She would rent the phone to anyone in the village on a per minute basis and repay the loan. It worked so well economically for the lady and for Grameen which got a percentage. It also fostered economic development as fishermen and farmers got more timely information on markets and weather.  Saved lives in emergencies as well.  See page 26-27 on the attached file (the powerpoint of the ICAI conference speech back 1998). Now the Telephone Lady venture is over, because the village economies grew so much that 90% of all families now own mobile phones (most via loans from the Grameen Bank). They have started new ventures such as "Fisherman's Phone" (page 78-79) and the "Literacy Mamas" which generates income for both the villagers receiving the loan and the bank as well. Critics complain Grameen's rates are too high (up to 30%). But that is what it takes to make sustainable development, not here-today-gone-tomorrow donations or dependency-building handouts.
> 
> The key principle is BoP (page 17). This means Bottom of the Pyramid, or the "poorest of the poor".  The BoP are so numerous that in aggregate, they have the greatest wealth in the world. They can finance their own personal, family and community development with micro-payments and they *do* finance it. It would not surprise me if the Grameen Group receives grants and donations to seed their research, but I am fairly sure none of that goes to subsidize the poor.  The poor can finance themselves anyway.
> 
> Cheers,
> Don
> 
>> Don Hinkelman, hummm - that name sounds familiar.  Don't I know you?  Ha!  How have you been?  Where are you?  What are you doing these days?  A bunch of folks dropped out of sight when we left Majuro in 1976.  Good to see you survived.  Holler - fill us in.
>> 
>> Lee
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 8, 2010, at 5:22 PM, Don Hinkelman wrote:
>> 
>>> Yawn, another story of the miracles of aid, "done right", in Africa. You would expect the NYT to do better.
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/world/africa/09kenya.html?ref=global-home
>>> 
>>> How long does it take to list the mistakes of unsustainability and inappropriateness in this project?
>>> - outside money and distant investors  (Haven't we learned anything from micro-financing and funding from within?)
>>> - macro-economic statistics (mortality, yields, test scores)   How do you measure initiative?
>>> - technology-based (how American can you get?)    Even after Vietnam and Iraq, we still throw technology at every problem.
>>> 
>>> Nonetheless, we have to admit that the ICA's history of comprehensive, bottom-up development (which produced pockets of miracles) was also unsustainable, but for different reasons.
>>> - committed, educated, passionate staff (that time and energy was worth millions of dollars, but we forgot to account for that, and the energy runs out after 5-20 years in the field)
>>> 
>>> What gets me excited?  The Grameen Group: http://www.grameen-info.org/
>>> At the last ICA International Conference in Japan, the young Grameen speaker was the best of the whole conference.  A fire-ry light in his eyes. He swears that Grameen never accepts charity. All development is funded by the bottom of pyramid, for the bottom of the pyramid.
>>> 
>>> Don Hinkelman
>>> 
>>> In Melbourne and Sapporo, working on sustainable technology practices for classrooms and schools around the world.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Lee Early
>> 4107 236th Street SW, M-106
>> Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043
>> 
>> Home Phone:  (425) 967-5987
>> Lee's Cell:     (425) 212-7997  
>> 
>> Email:  lees.mail at comcast.net
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