Vicoba

Muhammad Yunus

by

Muhammad Yunus

Louise Pizon

In this article, Louise PIZON (ESSEC Business School, Master in Strategy & Management of International Business (SMIB), 2020-2022) presents the portrait of Muhammad Yunus a well-known economist.

Muhammad Yunus or the “banker to the poor” was born in June 1940 in Bangladeshi in the city of Chittagong. He is a social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader. In 1976, he founded Grameen Bank, a micro finance organization and a community development bank. Microcredit is a delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. He is a pioneer of micro funding and microfinance concepts. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus was awarded Nobel Peace prize for these concepts.

Muhammad Yunus
Portrait Yunus
Source: Wikipédia

After his studies in United States, he came back to Bangladesh and worked for three months for the government’s Planning Commission. He quitted to join Chittagong University as head of the Economics department. He started to be involved in poverty reduction in 1974 when famine has struck Bangladesh.

Grameen bank (“village bank”)

It is in 1976, while visiting a poor village of Jobra next to Chittagong University that Muhammad Yunus has the idea of micro funding. He offered the opportunity to women to take a very small loan to create their business. He explains that at the beginning it was complicated to convince women to take loans because they were afraid of not being able to repay the loan. Also, he faced cultural problem; indeed, male didn’t agree to let women manage money.

Grameen Bank consists in constituting groups of solidarity within the villages of people who know each other. The risk of non-refunding is very low because the shame of mismanaging the loan money, naturally prevented borrowers from being dishonest with the Grameen Bank. At the very beginning groups were formed of five people, with one with the role of president and another one of secretary. Women are so proud to be part of these groups and they are meeting every week to check the status of their finance. Grameen bank allowed them to have an easier and more secure access to their money. It never had a shortage of funds for its loans. It was always local money for the poor women in the area. Members were always told that they had to create, operate and develop their branches with their own money.

Six years after the creation of Grameen Bank, the equality gender of the member rose to a 50/50 ratio. The bank observed that the impact on the family was significantly better in families where women were the borrowers compared to families where the borrowers were men. After this the priority for women borrower was set up and it became a common policy for all microcredit programs worldwide.

Link to VICOBA

Grameen Bank has many similarities with Village Community Bank (VICOBA). VICOBA is a savings and loan fund for members who have joined together and formed a group for economic improvement purposes. The system started in Tanzania twenty years ago and has shown great success for its members in being able to lend to each other, helping each other to solve various problems as well set up joint economic projects.

Both forms of micro funding aim at empowering women and lifting families out of poverty by allowing them to borrow a small amount of money to be able to start a business and generate more money. In both cases, the groups are formed in the same way: members come from the same village and in general it is group of close friends or family members. Within the group, a steering committee of five people is elected annually with the roles of chairperson, secretary, treasurer and two accountants. Both village community banks have weekly meetings to manage the accounts and ensure that people repay on time their loans.

However, there are some differences such as the number of members in the groups: five for Grameen bank versus fifteen to thirty members for VICOBA.

The biggest difference between Grameen and VICOBA is that people part of Grameen bank must open a bank account in Grameen bank whereas VICOBA is completely manage by the members of the group and the money is lock in a box by the treasurer of the group. In VICOBA they also have the possibility to follow business trainings to help them to build their businesses.

Why should I be interested in this post?

Do you want to know how an economist won a Nobel Peace Price? Find out the story of Muhammed Yunus or “the banker to the poor” who created the concept of micro funding to help the poor rural to lift out of the poverty and let them a chance to live in better conditions. Besides being a brilliant economist, he is also a humanitarian and a successful businessman whose purpose in life is creating a World without poverty.

Related posts on the SimTrade blog

   ▶ Louise PIZON Vicoba

   ▶ Louise PIZON My professional experience as a business developer at AJISO

Useful resources

Forbes Muhammed Yunus (Prix Nobel) (in French).

About the author

The article was written in August 2022 by Louise PIZON (ESSEC Business School, Master in Strategy & Management of International Business (SMIB), 2020-2022).

My professional experience as a business developer at AJISO

by

My professional experience as a business developer at AJISO

Louise Pizon

In this article, Louise PIZON (ESSEC Business School, Master in Strategy & Management of International Business (SMIB), 2020-2022) presents her personal internship experience as a business developer at AJISO in the sector of micro funding.

Presentation of the organization

AJISO is a legal aid provision organization that was established in 1998 with the aim of promoting women and children rights and access to justice in society. It empowers women and children through access to justice, organizing public awareness raising meetings about human rights, legal education and Gender-based Violence (GBV). It also trains paralegals, the ward protection committees and child rights clubs to eliminate all forms of violence in society.

After realizing that poverty is a leading cause of GBV, AJISO embarked on empowering women economically by mobilizing them into Village Community Banks (VICOBA) groups where they receive entrepreneurship trainings and other demand driven skills which in turn allows them to engage in economic activities and improve their livelihood hence reducing the risk of being subjected to GBV.

Every year AJISO together with the paralegals serve more than 500 clients and reaches out to more than 93,659 people (43,808 male and 49,851 female) in Kilimanjaro and neighboring regions with legal and GBV education.

Organization structure of AJISO
Ajiso association in Tanzania
Source: Ajiso

Organization structure of AJISO
Organization structure
Source: Ajiso

My role

My role within the organization was to help underprivileged women and disadvantaged minorities in Tanzania to get out of poverty and empower them. I was also in charge of finding new solutions to resolve problems and limits they are facing in their daily life and VICOBA groups.

My personal missions

The main mission was to promote human rights, access to justice and socio-economic empowerment of women and children in Tanzania :

My first mission was to work on VICOBA which is the main solution use by AJISO to help low-income and poor people to get out of the poverty by using micro funding. The solution of VICOBA groups to help people to build their own business. This solution is great and successful but has limits, so I found solution to these limits.

My second mission was to help communities, especially women that wish to join these groups but are unable to afford shares due to their extreme poverty situations. You need 10.000 Shilling to enter in these groups which represent around 3 euros.

My third mission was to work on the problem of wood in households. Indeed, most of the households have a traditional oven which uses a lot of wood. Women spend a lot of time in the wood to find firewood and during this time they are losing customers and money. Because of this they are enabled to buy shares in VICOBA group.

In addition to my missions, I have been working on the preparation of a training guide on VICOBA groups for a better understanding of the system for members and interested people.

Required skills needed

To work for AJISO you need minimum a bachelor’s in economics. The skills and knowledge needed are basics in finance, background in law, social work, gender issues, media or other relevant fields.

The language requirement is English C1.

You need to be flexible and have a strong adaptability to other culture as you will face “different” ways of work, “different” times of work, “different” ways of communication, and different planning and organization. You need also to be altruist to live together. It means a “different” way of managing projects and “different” expectations about the results of the projects. You should be capable to cope with these differences.

You need to send a contribution of 450€ to participate to the program.

Concepts

Village Community Bank (VICOBA)

VICOBA (Village Community Bank) is a savings and loan fund for members who have joined together and formed a group for economic improved purposes. The system started in Tanzania twenty years ago and has shown great success for its members to be able to lend to each other, help each other in various problems as well set up joint economic projects.

The micro funding provided by VICOBA involves banking transactions and group deposits using a share system. Shares are funds that are invested by a group member in the group for the purpose of making profit and becoming the owner of the group. A group member can buy one or more shares. The value of one share will be based on the agreement of the members of the group and it is recommended that the rate take into account the economic potential of its members. So, this feature requires group members to buy shares for each one by loudly stating the number of shares they are buying and the amount of social fund they are investing.

The VICOBA system is like any other financial system that requires a lot of attention in managing its records and assets. The VICOBA system encourages records to be stored in categories (shares and loans) and this is to simplify and be sure when one of the records is read differently or when it causes controversy. In the VICOBA system, records are recorded in the member’s book, group ledger.

With the help of the Economic Empowerment program of AJISO, at least 900 (756 female and 144 male) people including people living with disabilities 34 (18 male and 16 Female) were empowered with knowledge of VICOBA and entrepreneurship which in turn has enabled them to start and expand their businesses to improve their livelihood.

Economic benefits from VICOBA Bank

VICOBA has a lot of economic benefits compare to a normal bank. VICOBA members can benefit from borrowing’ procedures without collateral. The low interest rates are decided by the group members and it is charge between 5 to 10%. At the end of each cycle, shareholders received a return on investment. So, you can win money by simply injecting money into the fund (buying shares).

The poor and low-income household have access to a wide range of financial services such as deposit, loans, payment services, money transfers and insurance products.
All these benefits permit to low-income household to be able to invest in their small businesses and increase their income. VICOBA bank is simple with transparent transactions, It is a safe economic and a good way to secure group members’ market.

Weekly meeting of a VICOBA group
Meeting Vicoba
Source: Vicoba

My takeaway

Working for AJISO was a great experience both on a professional and personal level.

During this internship I understood that the success of an organization is based on the projects that propose long-term solutions to the problems of development and poverty. It was very beneficial to me and made me understand the importance of our involvement in a responsible cooperation generating a human development which will allow the village population that wish develop their business to set up autonomous actions to reach precise objectives. I believe that we can reduce poverty with the implementation of community development, social justice and various forms of emergency interventions.

For the personal aspect, I have acquired a greater sensitivity and knowledge of global inequalities. I understand the importance of helping each other to make things evolve. I learned to be humble because we are so lucky to live in such conditions in France and I am thankful.

Why should I be interested in this post?

If you are interesting to work for a NGO or helping low income people to going out of the poverty through micro funding this post is for you. In this post, I explain my experience as a business developer withing the association AJISO headquarter in Tanzania. And how an almost entirely female association has succeeded in lifted a large part of the population out of poverty.

Related posts on the SimTrade blog

   ▶ All posts about Professional experiences

   ▶ Louise PIZON Vicoba

Useful resources

AJISO

About the author

The article was written in August 2022 by Louise PIZON (ESSEC Business School, Master in Strategy & Management of International Business (SMIB), 2020-2022).