The Poor Always Pay Back - Book Report/Review Example

Download file to see previous pages Also, the book revolves around various other issues of the society including health care, women’s empowerment, and children education which are all a part of the bank’s initiatives. The book shows its readers how a financial institution like Grameen Bank responds to the needs of its borrowers and had adopted changes in its system for making its loan programs and caregiving services more effectively to the poor.
The commencement of Grameen Bank, its working, challenges and the changes incorporated by the concern in the past twenty-five years are clearly described by the authors. The origins of this institution head back to 1976, when Muhammad Yunus started his project in Bangladesh’s rural area of Jobra, by designing a credit system to provide banking services to the rural people, focusing particularly on the poor. The project continued to run successfully and was introduced among the other rural areas of Bangladesh too, with the support of the government. By 1983, the project attained the name of Grameen Bank with the formal approval. Initially, it held objectives to extend opportunities of credit to everyone by facilitating banking services to poor families and also women. In the book, the authors speak about the challenges faced by the bank in the times of catastrophes, especially the floods in 1998 which created a massive repayment crisis to it. Actually, this was the period that pushed forward the members of the bank to focus on making major changes to its system. The bank was in a very tight situation, so much so that ‘evolving’ was a necessity for it to survive the crisis as well as to meet the needs of its borrowers. This led to the development of the Grameen II, making considerable changes in its system. “Through Grameen II, the bank is addressing microfinance frontier issues: open access savings, flexible loan products, self-reliance, the absence of donor dependency for funds, and product development to cater to the needs of the retirees (Grameen Pension Scheme) and their adult children (Higher Education Loans).”. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More