Yunus Centre for Social Business opens in Glasgow

From left, Pamela Gillies, vice chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland; Prof Muhammad Yunus and former British premier Gordon Brown during the inauguration of Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at the university on July 5. Photo: CourtesyBss, Dhaka

Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) in Scotland launched "Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health" in a ceremony attended by academics and the elite of Glasgow on July 5.

The centre has been established by GCU to carry out action research to find solutions to social problems, including the critical issue of access to microcredit and affordable healthcare, according to a message received here yesterday.

A leading health economist of the UK Prof Cam Donaldson has been appointed as "Yunus Professor" to lead the centre in implementing its objectives.

On the occasion of the opening of the centre, Prof Donaldson gave the inaugural lecture of the Yunus Chair titled "Markets and Health in the Home of Adam Smith and Yunus" referring to father of modern economics Adam Smith who studied and taught in Glasgow, and Prof Yunus who created the concept of social business.

The Yunus Chair was established at the GCU in early 2010.

Through the partnership with GCU, a series of social businesses will be created in Scotland to bring job opportunities to families who have been dependent on welfare for generations.

As a first step, GCU and the government of Scotland are preparing to set up "Grameen Scotland"--a microcredit bank in Glasgow along the lines of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

Former British premier Gordon Brown made a special appearance at the event to have a meeting with Prof Yunus on the occasion of the latter's visit to Glasgow.

Vice Chancellor of GCU Pamela Gillies presented Prof Yunus with a rare first edition of Adam Smith's book "The Theory of Moral Sentiments".

To take advantage of Prof Yunus's visit, GCU organised a high level meeting attended by John Swinney, finance minister of Scotland, Pamela Gillies and six heads of foundations and companies to discuss the business plan of the bank.

The main target group of the microcredit bank would be individuals who belong to families who have been on welfare for four generations in Glasgow.

The finance minister pledged his full support to the bank, including facilitating appropriate legal framework for the initiative.

With the collaboration of GCU, Grameen has already launched the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing in Bangladesh.

Prof Yunus, who was in Glasgow from 3-6 July, also signed a memorandum of understanding for collaboration with Prof Anton Muscatelli, vice chancellor of the 600-year-old University of Glasgow to develop close collaboration between the university and Grameen to build academic programmes on social business.

The university also organised a daylong conference on social business, with Prof Yunus as chief guest, attended by delegates from many countries

back from launch of global grameen last week in wolfsburg


will use the London Institute of Social Business Space to update on partners in Global Grameen's race to be world number 1 sustainability partnership branding

Partner announcement of Grameen Otto - Germany's and world's largest mail order starts textile business in Bangladesh with Grameen

www.macrae.tv washington dc bureau 301 881 1655  (gmail address macrae.tv)

How to Avert A Great Depression Through the Hungry 2010s? 

Answer, By Making All Banking Very Much Cheaper, By Norman Macrae

If banks in rich democracies had been truly competitive institutions, at least one of them somewhere would have seized the main opportunity created by the computer. This main opportunity was to make all deposit-banking vastly cheaper than ever before. By this cheapening it should make such banking hugely more profitable. Then further competition would search for the cheapest ways to guide all the world’s saving into the most profitable (or otherwise most desirable) forms of capital investment, thus enriching all mankind.

Bangladesh - Developing economics around productivity potential of all people and sustainability of every community

Poverty is defined as signal of a locally broken system that needs repairing

To end rural poverty, villages most trusted people need to be nurses, teachers and bankers – BRAC’s grassroots network emerged round first two with its first product being oral rehydration for infants, while Grameen designed hi-trust rural banking

Since 1976, Grameen’s microcredit brings banking to the poorest people and creates a village knowledge-sharing centre around every 60 female members. Peer to peer understanding of how to become income generating and how a woman remains healthy were original foci of the village centre’s meetings. Mrs Begum, the woman among the 4 co-founders of Grameen is assigned particularly to facilitating women’s health awareness (ref 1 mars begum interview)

Before the world’s first bank for the poor was constituted in Bangladeshi law in 1983, Grameen members were surveyed on how they defined a communal end to poverty. 16 inter-generational decisions became integrated into the purpose and culture of the bank – nine directly connect with health, and others indirectly eg through educating our children (ref 2 16 decisions). Later, the world’s millennium development goals and consciousness of the race to end poverty were impacted by such benchmark successes as microcredit banking. President Obama is himself a community-building son of microcredit and Yes We Can has long been an end poverty slogan of microcredit worldwide networks collaborating around the human race to end poverty.

Early products distributed by the bank were carrot seeds to help end night blindness of children and a loan for the minimal housing needed to have a monsoon-proof roof and a pit latrine

From 1993 Grameen starts to offer $2 per year per family health insurance – this covers diagnosis of illness by doctors at village centre, and direction of where to what is cheapest cure. From 1996, the 125000+ village centres start to be digitally connected by mobile telephone ladies- networking life critical information is prioritised in celebrating end of digital divides. Also in 1996 Grameen begins its solar and natural energy division which increasingly replaces the filth of kerosene with clean natural energy systems

A core strategy is to develop partnerships around a world class teaching hospiital in Dhaka. Students courses will be almost free if they return to practice in the village for several years after qualifying  Additionally, in Grameen’s case over 30000 children of the village have already graduates and may study medicine.

Social business designs aim for 10 times more economic ways of communally designing organizational systems and connecting networks. Some early partnership successes since Future Capitalism strategy of Nobel identity are:

Replicating the end of unnecessary blindness franchise originally perfected  by Aravind in India:  initial loans for building eye care hospitals come from The Green Children Pop group’s fund raising

Partnership with French corporation Veolia that is offering 80 times cheaper drinking water than has ever been offered by a business before

Vitamin fortified children's yogurt of Grameen Danone – the origin of the future capitalism partnership strategy between world’s most resourced organizations and grassroots networks serving life-critical needs. (Updating list of Future capitalism partners at http://futurecapitalism.tv includes healthcare partnerships with GE , Mayo Clinic, Pfizer, German-Saudi hospitals ... )

Examples of how the www search for microhealth is becoming as exciting as that of microcredit include:

The extremely affordable posters competition at the america’s leading health congress -bookmark

The likelihood of a vibrant healthcare track at 2010’s microcreditsummit in Kenya. Our exemplary local  host Jamii Bora is arguably the world’s most exciting microcredit design being mobile-designed and integrating the productive energies of youth and women. One of the main poverty compounding crises this microcredit’s design had to turn round arose from not reaching 99% repayment rates among members until offering an affordable healthcare system as an integral part of the loan process. Many African families are suddenly impacted by a member having a serious illness and loans were being diverted to these emergencies prior to Jamii Bora innovating the most affordable of health insurance systems.

One of the 2 most exciting purposes that Dr Yunus wants to help Bangladeshi’s complete during his lifetime is a rural national health system . Here is a short brief in draft form – I am not a medical expert and have only visited Bangladesh twice so rely on your co-editing to make this as relevant as possible.

sofia in london this week...

when I showed you attached grid you asked me why green text on left handside was bigger - apologies for brain lag - answer cos it links to mostof'a's 2 main project yunus forum in every city and youth ambassador 5000

over on the right are links to competitions from world health congress and mit entrepreneur ideas cos new york team have a penchant for competitions

more fun but yet unlinked is if saskia convinces adidas to launch no shoeless child at the football world cup - I expect if anyone can, saskia can; another big scale project is vivian in paris' yunusmovie- as probably the most committed female journalist on bangladesh's side, I am sure she will get there

incidentally I currently feel I know vivian well enough to ask just about anything but saskia not quite (need a bit of german comeraderie to find something saskia wants)

you also asked if I had invited other bangladesh microcredits to june 29 - yes eg letter to fazle (however not knowing if lamiya will publish the booklet on tome celebrating bangladesh's first thrird of a century of microinnovation networking (which is now about 4 months late) I may have to leave a more3 exciting invitation to yunus 70th birthday

chris

ah well another few hundred links to program into file over weekend

http://www.grameen.tv  

worldscale events

dhaka june 29 http://yunusforum.net

berlin november

nairobi march 2010

tell us others to link in

Banking & Health

Back in 1976, the idea of offering village women a loan to start being income generating broke several cultural taboos. In particular Dr Yunus wasn’t permitted to speak to individual village women directly. So he left this his female team members who talked to the village women inside their homes while Dr Yunus waited outside in the village where children tended to congregate. Children have always brought a special joy to Dr Yunus and pretty soon he noticed that many village children were night blind. He started asking around about the cause and a cure. He was told that the cause was not enough vitamins, and the simplest cure would be to eat carrots and other vegetables. So village bank started selling small seeds of carrots and veggies. And Grameen became the largest seller of seeds in Bangladesh.

Twenty years later the pursuit of healthy diets for children was at the heart of what may be the greatest leadership innovation of our era. How about if the world’s most resourced organisations formed innovation partnerships with grassroots networks serving life critical need. Thanks to the CEO of Danone this world leading dairy company headquartered in Paris became the first international partner with Grameen to agree to forming g such a social business venture - the product : a vitamin enriched yogurt. From the perspective of the world’s largest corporation future capitalism frees them from corporate social responsibility’s excuse - we’d like not to externalize but we can’t afford to be first and at a competitive disadvantage . Future Capitalism cases become so famous that a leader cannot afford not to be first to join in – at least healthcare companies like G, Mayo, Pfizer, BASF think so

From origin, Grameen bank has seen its duty to be that of embedding customer service in the village. For every 60 members that take out a loan, Grameen builds a village centre for them to meet, learn from each other, clarify what they communally priorities next. Just as helping illiterate women to understand how to start up income generation needed a lot of on the site coaching, it turned out that 9 of the 16 decisions that members most wanted community investment in involved health.  The village centres were as convenient for swapping knowhow on how to prevent illness and stay fit as they were for small business trainings. And in addition as Dr Yunus like to point out when people like Bill Gates tell him that microbanking is outside the scope of interests of Gates Foundation, I have never seen anything better for health than income generation.

..would want to help improve on the herstory of Bangladesh below and so the sustainability of any nations in a networked world ?

Herstory of Bangladesh

Although they represent half of the human species, the role of women, children and the poor in developing countries is interesting but seldom told –let alone accounted for in the way that rich nations analyze organizational performance, do academic research or model macroeconomics.

However as Bill Clinton has said[i] in the case of Bangladesh’s first third of a century as a nation, it is impossible not to report with the lens of herstory.  This is because this nation’s economy is generated by the rural economy and the sustainability investment banking of the poorest women. Moreover, now that Obama has observed that top-down globalisation does not compound local community sustainability in banking, health, green energy or education, Bangladesh’s herstory is epicentral to any next generation networks who are interested in economically mapping how and why sustainability investments can transparently compound services which human being most critically need and want to serve.

Bangladesh is leading 10 times more economical banking , healthcare, energy, mobile partnering and education. It is doing this in a mainly open source way so as to take economics as far above zero-sum as the greatest entrepreneurial challenges commuicated around our planet can achieve. Why not join the party http://yunusforum.net once you have satisfied yourself on how the reality-making of Bangladesh’s free marketing models came about?

How was bottom-up banking and aid founded?

Bangladesh was the third and last 100 million plus nation to gain independence after English colonial rule over India. It achieved independence in a bloody war where the nation we now call Pakistan flattened its infrastructure before retreating. Within a couple of years a million people were dying of famine. Two types of leaders emerged:

· Those not atypical of any post colonial government rewarded by inter-governmental aid

· Those who were Muslims but to whom Gandhian system beliefs and goals were core.
 

The Muslim Gandhians networked around 2 extraordinary youthful entrepreneurs. Fazle Abed who had learnt his business skills in the Shell corporation in London, and Muhammad Yunus who had experienced what economics has to offer as a Fulbright scholar at VanderBilt.

INVENTION OF BOTTOM-UP AID
Within three years Fazle Abed’s network had invented 2 services that merited rural-wide replication and the network around Dr Yunus one. Fazle Abed’s network invented oral rehydration which was capable of saving up to 20% of infant’s lives and the most economical form of primary education. Both of these depended on professionals - nurses and teachers - being embedded in the village.

When Fazle Abed approached the government leadership group about replicating these franchises, he was told this was not an interest of government but if he could resource bottom-up aid he was free to go and do it. A third of a century later, the world’s largest privatized services group of about 150000 employees governed by social business models – that is owned by the poorest - have developed many bottom up industry sectors including village nursing, village education, nationwide poultry, nationwide livesto0ck, national leadership of sericulture and silk fashions branding.

INVENTION OF MICROCREDIT - peoples safest banking

When Muhammad Yunus approached government circles about microcredit village banking it took 7 years to pass a national law constituting Grameen Bank as a one of a kind network – over 80% owned by the poorest and the rest owned by government. Not one cent owned by the board of operational executives. Notably, Grameen can only operate in rural areas and its purpose must always facilitate services to the poorest. Before the bank was formally constituted the members were surveyed in terms of what communally ending poverty meant beyond empowering individuals to be income generating- they came up with 16 decisions around which every communal venture that Grameen has innovated beyond pure microcredit has been generated. Primarily these decisions emphasize the mothers wish for health and safety of the household and educating her children to go way beyond illiteracy.

To explore Grameen and true microcredit banking is to study how sustainability investments compound the most essential services. Today the world’s most resourced organizations can also discover industry sector responsibility by partnering in innovations with Bangladesh’s grassroots vital services networks and social business constitutions. In parallel ,the national strategy of Bangladesh is to design sustainability solutions which communities most desperately need and to open source replications of these around the world particularly with India's and China’s economies.
 

Whilst testing of microcredit – and what became the safest banking system   - began in 1976, another extraordinary year was 1996. It was in this year that Bangladesh started to become the networking world’s epicentre of mobile and internet for the poor and green energy micro-systems.

All three of Bangladesh’s major microcredit networks - Grameen, BRAC and  ASA - have explored mobiles in banking in different ways producing 3 superbly segmented microcredit services. However, it was the entrepreneurial courage of Muhammad Yunus who seized on taking out a mobile franchise at cents in the dollar after global consultants had mis-estimated the value of mobile telephony on Bangladesh by between 10-fold and hundredfold. He also revelled in ensuring that the first application of mobiles was in villages – Grameen was able to connect its 125000 village centers whose life critical questions and knowledge transfer had previously relied on manual cross-fertilization by banking branch managers. Today, along with India Bangladesh is number 1 in designing how mobiles can change every type of worldwide business. -eg http://www.bankabillion.org http://www.grameensolutions.com

Just as the world’s poorest nation had the greatest incentive to design a banking system in a way that networked the productivity of the missing half of its population, today projections show that Bangladesh will need to be a leader in ending over-carbonization. Otherwise it is stochastically likely to be the first 100+ million population to be washed away. It seems that in the history of humanity – if women, and children and the poor are to be accounted for at all – that the world’s yes we can networks ought now be collaborating with Bangladesh in every way that social business networks map. Ironically with the collapse of top-down banking  worldwide, herstory has never been so interesting for all 7 billion beings on our planet. Come join in the celebrations in Dhaka on June 29 http://www.yunusforum.net and journalists unite to launch herstories and other missing genres of sustainability investment.

http://grameen.tv we can currently make the case that the brand of microcredit branding as a franchise is worth hundreds of times more than the brand of wall street banking and since the culture of microcredit is all about the millennium goals, it can be the time to bring truth economics back from the dead- healthy societies generate strong economies not vice versa; healthy/sustainable societies collaborate investment around millennium goals, QED.  

I believe it  is the case that anyone who calls themself an alumni of Muhammad Yunus is expected to believe that the millennium goals are minimum ones to ask all friends -and peer to peer developers of social actions or social business - to be aware of, to co-mentor http://yunusmentors.com  and converge around;

increasingly it may be useful to ask of any so-called transparency , sustainability investment practice groups or any of the corporate responsibilty or accountability networks - do you commit to the M-goals or any decisions http://www.youtube.com/socialactions

mail submitted to stanford blog on social capital marketplaces http://www.ssireview.org/opinion/entry/a_coffee_shop_for_the_social_capital_market/

I am a mathematician. I like to see constitutional models of organisational systems defined
so they are transparently verifiable and not smudged with all sorts of classifications that
social and CSR funds have used over recent years

Can we make a list of models that are 100% verifiable with exact specifications?

The one that is simplest to me is Dr Yunus' Social Business Model which is the subject
of his book "creating a world without poverty, social business, future of capitalism". This
is a constituitional model that has been tried and tested in bangladesh for 25 year now
with probably over 500 verifiable cases, as well as being the core model of microcredit
the way Dr Yunus and his 4 founders originated this form of microbanking owned by
the poorest in the community.

Are there any other named models where an ordinary panel of concerned people could
look at an organisation and say yes it is or no it isnt applying the particular named model?