What to do with the poorest? Bring them into the economy is one view. But is this a story of good, or full of problems just off stage?
But the group's leaders say the microcredit industry needs to try new approaches to help the poorest people. They have coupled small loans with skills training and grants of food. And they are experimenting When the dynamic Ms. Akhter got her first loan, for $50, she said she already had $250 saved from working as a cook and raising chickens, the family trade. "I thought I could increase my capital by taking the loan," she said. She invested it in a calf she later sold for $100. Her next $80 — borrowed at 27 percent interest — she loaned out at more than triple that rate.
and, thinking it through, some policy changes
But now it has entirely dropped the use of loans in one pilot program for "ultrapoor" women. BRAC gives them goats or cows to raise, coupled with training and health care, rather than burdening them with debts they cannot repay.
None of the poverty-stricken women who sat under a palm tree in Mochahata village on a recent morning had ever dared to apply for a microloan. One woman's pierced nose hole was empty because she had already been forced to sell her gold stud for money. Another's 9-year-old son pedaled a rickshaw for 50 cents a day to keep the family fed.
But they eagerly joined BRAC's new program — and were pleased to see their fast-breeding goats multiply. They were still so poor that their bodies seemed little more than collections of bones beneath worn saris, but their new assets offered hope.
"I had nothing, nobody," said Mina, who worked as a maid for payment in rice after her husband abandoned her. "I was scared to become a member of BRAC. I was too poor to repay a loan. But now that I'm getting goats free, I'm interested."
