Script 

The Grameen Bank was already open for business. The word 'grameen', by the way, actually means 'village'. Our guide from the bank was the general manager, Nurjahan Begum.

NURJAHAN BEGUM, GENERAL MANAGER, GRAMEEN BANK: So he'll put down their number and money, how much he's collecting.

They bring their cash each week and pay their loan money back.

NURJAHAN BEGUM: Yes. So he will write down in this passbook. There's the money.

Dholla's microbusiness women were gathered in this simple tin shed to pay the regular weekly instalments on their loans. They don't go to the bank, the bank comes to them. They're all far too busy making money. Hardly a fortune, it has to be said, but more than Bangladesh's dirt poor villagers normally live on. The annual per capita income in the country is just over A$500, with millions on much less.

WOMAN, (Translation): Yes, we had a very hard time. We had just a small meal every three of four days. Now we have no hardship at all.

You would have noticed the almost complete predominance of women here. That's because something like 97% of the close enough to $3 billion Grameen has loaned over the last 30 years has been to women.

REPORTER: And no collateral? They don't have to bring anything in?

NURJAHAN BEGUM: Did any of you need to offer collateral to get a loan.

WOMEN, (Translation): No.

The reality is these modest village enterprises give a whole new definition to small business. In fact, they're the smallest of the small, all of them built up over a few years starting with a no-collateral microloan equivalent in takas, the Bangladeshi currency, to a lousy couple of hundred Australian dollars. Grameen-inspired, they're many and varied, be it sewing the country's traditionally colourful saris, selling them locally at affordable prices, or handmade mats from bamboo husks. No formal education or training, as such, is required. Point being, these women and 6 million others just like them throughout Bangladesh, have neither of these things. But, thanks to their microbusinesses, they told us, now their kids will.

NURJAHAN BEGUM: So now she has a house.

What else have you achieved for your family?

WOMAN, (Translation): I have proper housing now. I have three daughters, no son.

NURJAHAN BEGUM: She has three daughters.

WOMAN, (Translation): Two daughter already married, One already goes to the school.

NURJAHAN BEGUM: She's reading in class 7.

Precariously, if that's the word for being careful not to put foot wrong, we rounded off our visit Dholla with a quick visit to a business the locals are especially proud of, a cow-fattening farm.

NURJAHAN BEGUM: He can earn per cow 10,000 to 15,000.

REPORTER: So the men work on the farm with the cows, and the women still handle the loan money?

Were they very poor before?

NURJAHAN BEGUM: She doesn't have anything.

REPORTER: Just a very, very basic life. Now they have a business, a thriving business.

Well, I guess you could say this has been a tantalising glimpse, a crash course, if you like, into how this way of financing incredibly modest small businesses, small village businesses like this one, and how it least has some sort of impact on what the rest of us have always felt as being a futile attempt to reduce the amount of poverty in the world.


Feature Report: The Poverty Busters

Camera
SHAKUR RAHMAN

Camera Assistants
EKRAMUL HOQUE
ATAUR RAHMAN

Producers
JANE WORTHINGTON
AARON THOMAS

Editor
WAYNE LOVE

Translations/ Subtitling
TUSHAR ROY