Last month, President Barack Obama spoke to people of Ghana about opportunity, responsibility, and the important role each of them has in determining their country’s future. His message was clear: “The world will be what you make of it.” Obama’s words challenged and encouraged the people of Ghana to take control of their own destiny – Africans have already shown their capacity and commitment to making change, and now is the time for them to use those tools to create new opportunities for themselves, he said.

Since 2003, Dana Dakin has been helping to bring opportunities to life for Ghanaian women. Dakin is the founder of Womens Trust, a nonprofit group that works to empower women and girls in Africa through microenterprise, education and healthcare, and that has helped over 1,000 underprivileged women secure microloans and rise above unstable living wages. The organization’s U.S. team works closely with an on-the-ground staff in Pokuase, Ghana. The staff is responsible for loan administration and management of Womens Trust’s education and healthcare programs.

Madera Group is working with Women Trust to increase their online presence and visibility in the social media world. We recently helped launch a new Womens Trust Facebook page to promote future fundraising and social events this fall. Please visit the Women’s Trust fan page to learn more about their work and ways to get involved with the organization.

Photo: Founder Dana Dakin with Gertrude Ankrah, Program Development Director of WomensTrust in Pokuase, Ghana (photo by Suki Hill)

He started with some history of himself and Grameen Bank, which in itself is a fascinating story. In 1976, after degrees from Dhaka University and Vanderbilt University, he encountered many poor women in the village near where he worked. So he started lending them very small amounts of money. Seven years later, in 1983, Grameen Bank (aka Village Bank) was launched as an actual bank, designed to serve the poorest of the poor.

Dr. Yunus framed his talk with an amusing anecdote. A friend said, “All you’re doing is giving away small amounts of money? And for this, you get a Nobel prize? That’s too easy!” Dr. Yunus went on to say that it was simple—just take everything you know about banking, reverse it, and collect your prize! And that was the basic idea of Grameen Bank.

Banks say: the more you have, the more you can get. So Grameen said: the less you have, the more attractive you are.

Banks want a lot of collateral, but the poor have none. No collateral, no guarantors.

Conventional banks are owned by rich men, but Grameen was owned by poor women. One of the things that led to its increased education program was that some of the women that Grameen talked to in local communities said, “No, no. Don’t give me a loan. I don’t know what to do with money.” In fact, some of them had never even touched money in their entire lives. So the staff is trained to recognize that kind of woman as the ideal client. That is the person for whom a small loan will make a huge difference.

Building on that, Grameen added an education program. So children of clients are encouraged to go to school. And when these children did attend, they excelled. Some of them were at the very top of their class. And for those who were eligible for college or higher education, a student loan program was instituted. Last year, Grameen gave 51,000 scholarships, and now has 21,000 student loans available; the only qualification is enrollment in college or university.

The next part of his talk dealt with Grameen’s program toward beggars. The prevailing theory about microcredit is that it is only for “entrepreneurs.” Dr. Yunus contended that all people are entrepreneurs; hard work and creativity are basic human traits.

After examining their local community, the Grameen team realized, by talking to many beggars, that in each of their lives there was a “tipping point” that forced them into a life of begging rather than formal work. So they started a program of very small loans and education for the beggars. They would give beggars small items to sell— food, matches, household items. With a twinkle in his eye, Dr. Yunus asked, “Since they were going house to house anyway, why not take a few things to sell?”

This program quickly grew to serve 100,000 beggars; and now 10,000 of them have completely stopped begging and earn their livelihood through selling these small items, or becoming personal shoppers for the households they previously begged from.

The bigger picture in all of this was examining the fundamental nature of business. Is it just to maximize profit? From an economics perspective, this is an incomplete model; it’s a one-dimensional view of human nature. To augment this model, Dr. Yunus suggests we also need “social businesses” measured by the degree to which they help, just as for-profit businesses are measured by profit.

(Personally, I am also in favor of a hybrid approach; I think for-profit businesses are realizing they can create premium products and have happy employees by adding social change into their product mix. But this is my personal sidebar. Back to the talk…)

One of the social businesses started was Grameen Danone, a joint venture between Grameen Bank and Groupe Danone, one of the largest food companies in the world. Grameen Danone’s sole mission was to feed the hungry by selling yogurt fortified with vitamins and nutrients as cheaply as possible. If they had a penny of product, they didn’t need 99 cents of marketing and sales—they could just sell it for a penny. This business was solely measured by how many people would be prevented from going hungry and malnourished. In fact, the mission was so focused that Dr. Yunus insisted they go one step further than biodegradable containers. The containers needed to be edible! If the poor were paying, they should get something from it.

At a higher level, these social changes need to be measured, and a clear and agreed upon metric is the set of  UN Millenium Development Goals. One of these goals is reducing poverty in half by 2015. In the new beggars program, these loans are not handouts, they are real loans. They must be paid back, but the beggars can pay back a penny at a time, even once per year. No interest, no time limits. And this program has had 60% repayment so far!

So if 2015 is the date at which poverty will be reduced by half, Dr. Yunus is already talking about plans to open a Poverty Museum soon after 2030. The grin and twinkle in his eye reappear frequently, particularly with this pronouncement.

The final questioner from the audience said that Muhammad Yunus was a great inspiration to so many people. So who was his inspiration? He simply replied that the borrowers were his inspiration. Talking to the people whose lives had been transformed was his greatest inspiration.

Dr. Yunus, an economist, attended the forum to present his work combating poverty by providing small loans to rural women in Bangladesh. Gorbachev, then Governor Vicente Fox from Mexico, and the other heads of state at the meeting were deeply moved by Yunus’s humility, graciousness and profound presentation on alternatives to poverty.

Last Monday, Dr. Yunus won the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. His work on behalf of poor rural women and his socially driven entrepreneurial work of the Grameen Bank has inspired hundreds of microcredit NGO’s around the world.

I knew then that Yunus had inspired and made a significant impact on the several hundred delegates at the meeting, including several leading women’s rights advocates such as the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Nell Merlino, founder of Take our Daughters to Work. (In the last few years it was renamed to include sons.) http://www.daughtersandsonstowork.org/. Nell is now the CEO of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, the first online micro lender. http://www.count-me-in.org/.

Here in the Bay Area, my colleague Adriana Dakin and I are working as consultants to Julie Abrams, the CEO of Women’s Initiative for Self Employment (http://www.womensinitiative.org). She is another up-and-coming leader in the field of microenterprise. When Julie spoke earlier this month at her organization’s fundraiser, she recognized founder Paulette Meyer, who this week received a Jefferson Award for her work as a local hero. In its 18-year history, Women’s Initiative has served 15,000 women, radically changing the lives of women and families by providing empowering business training and micro-loans.

Some of the most prominent Bay Area businesswomen team up with Women’s Initiative to make a positive impact on the success of high-potential, lower-income women. The program has been so successful at helping women raise their earnings that the organization is expanding to three additional counties around the Bay Area in 2007. We know Julie works long hours to achieve the organization’s mission.

This holiday season, we owe her and other changemakers a gift of gratitude for finding effective ways to improve the lives of thousands of women every year in the most tangible and inspiring ways.

As this year comes to an end please consider making a contribution to Women’s Initiative. To learn more and donate now please go to: http://www.womensinitiative.org.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and joy filled Holiday Season!