Do We Merely Tinker?

In 2006, Muhammed Yunnus received the Nobel Peace Prize for establishing the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.  What?  A Nobel Peace Prize for establishing a bank?  Well his idea was unique at the time.  Yunnus is an economist, and he conceived of the idea now called microlending, where the loan committee is actually a group of peers, who decide whether a small loan for a business idea such as hiring fellow villagers to create beaded jewelry or buying a few goats to make milk, are valid ideas.  Then a small loan is made, for beading materials or a goat.  The loan committee monitors the progress.  And the original idea was that no one else borrowed until the first loan was paid off.   It was the tribe taking care of it's members.

Microlending became a huge success.  Foundations in the United States, Ford, the Rockefellers, MacArthur all took notice and started funding microlending projects all over the world.  

One of the people who introduced Yunnus to the foundation world was Jacqueline Novogratz who I knew when I worked in New York.  She is, in my opinion, a brilliant and energetic woman who took a MBA from Stanford and decided business principles could be applied to reducing poverty.  After stints at Rockefeller and other foundations, Jacqueline began Acumen, which was one of the first social entrepreneur investment organizations.  She now receives money from Google, and other high-flying Silicon Valley corporations.  She has been profiled in Business Week, Fortune, and The New York Times.   Sigh, I knew her when...

Several weeks ago I lunched with a friend who told me about another friend who recently retired.  This person was thinking about moving to Africa to become involved in microlending projects.  And I remember thinking to myself at the time: why not stay here and do it.

There are some incredibly bright people doing amazing things to help people gain a toe hold for a better way of life.  The ideas skirt the traditional economic models we have all become reliant upon and addicted to in this country, or in many parts of the world for that matter.  Yet, as we watch not just company after company die by the side of the road but our whole infrastructure crumble, perhaps it is time to examine other ways to make this engine run.  There are options.

Which isn't to say microlending  or even the work that Acumen does would solve anything.  But they are creative ideas that have enormous success.  Surely there must be other ideas.  

While I have not said this as eloquently, today the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote an op-ed opining that caring more about economic ideology and less about the people who have been impacted by adhering to the economic ideology is wrong.  

As we begin to look under the hood, I would hope we listen to the Archbishop and don't continue to throw money and time at institutions because we somehow believe this is a small fix.  We need to think about more than tinkering with engine.  And fortunately for us, there are people who have been fixing economies all over the world who are probably ready to help us here.