Microcredit (A Toastmasters speech)

I started going to Toastmasters meetings late last year and since I've gotten through the first two speeches (which were more introductory than anything) I thought that I could post the next ones as I prepare them. At any rate, this is my third speech at the Toastmasters ASC club (in french).


En 1976, dans un petit village nommé Jobra, Mohammed Yunnus donne sont premier microprêt. Une somme d'argent équivalente à 27 dollars et prêtée à 42 femmes du village pour acheter du bambou qu'elles utilisent pour faire des meubles. Ceci est l'atome primordial de ce qui deviendra, officiellement en 1983 la Banque Grameen (ou Banque du village en Bangla).

Ce qui rend l'histoire intéressante est que la Banque Grameen n'est pas simplement qu'une banque qui prête aux moins nantis de la société. La façon de fonctionner de la banque est basée sur son but ultime: augmenter le niveau de vie de ces clients, ce que les règles d'emprunt cherchent à maximiser.


Par exemple, au départ, et toujours maintenant en grande majorité, les emprunteurs sont des femmes. Il s'agit d'un choix qui a été fait car, dans une famille pauvre, celles-ci subviennent aux besoins immédiats de l'unité familiale. L'argent leur permet de s'affranchir et augmente leur confort relatif ainsi que celui de leurs enfants. Ces derniers ont donc, en grandissant, une meilleure change de survie, et une meilleur vie.


Un autre piliers de microprêts de la Banque, et de l'industrie du microprêt en général, et le prêt solidaire. La Banque ne débourse de l'argent qu'à un groupe de femme, d'habitude 5. Celles-ci doivent avoir un projet commun, un rêve commun. Le montant est donné en plusieurs parties à différentes membres du groupe et le montant suivant n'est pas déboursé avant que la première partie ne soit remboursée. L'impact de cela est que les femmes s'entraident pour s'assurer que le projet fonctionne et que les montants soient remboursés. Il est important de noter que le groupe n'est pas responsable du prêt de chacune. Si une personne ne paie pas, les autres membres ne sont pas obligées de payer. La motivation est purement celle de vouloir une meilleure vie dans le futur.


Ceci m'amène à la caractéristique la plus importante de la Banque Grameen: la confiance. La banque n'est pas liée légalement à ses emprunteurs et seule leur motivation et leur honneur leur demande de repayer l'argent qu'elles ont reçu.


Les effets du microcrédit sont biens réels. C'est pour cette raison que Mohammed Yunnus a reçu le prix Nobel de la paix en 2006. L'impact le plus spectaculaire est le fait que, selon la Banque, 50% des emprunteurs ont pu se sortir de la pauvreté extrême (définie comme le fait d'avoir les enfants à l'école, de manger trois repas par jour, d'avoir de l'eau potable, etc.). Pour vous donner une idée du nombre de personnes et de l'impact, sachez qu'entre 2003 et 2007, la Banque est passée de 3.12 millions à 7.34 millions de membres (97% de femmes). La banque a donnée, depuis sa création, plus de 6.55 milliard de dollars en prêts. de ce nombre 5.87 milliard a été repayé.
Il faut noter que la banque est réellement une entreprise profitable. Les prêts ne sont pas des dons et des intérêts, au prix du marché ou plus élevés, doivent être payés. Comme toutes les banques, ce sont les actionnaires qui profitent le plus des activités. Dans ce cas-ci par contre, les actionnaires sont les emprunteurs qui possèdent 94% des parts de la banque (l'autre 6% appartient au gouvernement du Bangladesh).
Même si la banque est basée sur la confiance et non sur le marteau légal, la banque présente actuellement un taux de recouvrement de près de 98%.


En conclusion, il s'agit d'une façon différente de faire des affaires. Une vraie entreprise sociale qui permet à tout le monde de s'enrichir ensemble et d'avancer. J'espère vous avoir donné un aperçu intéressant et un ouverture sur le monde du microcrédit.


I'm using Blogger to write the speeches before speaking so I'll be able to post them here everytime. Obivously, the versions here are a little rough but still, stay tuned for more.

Blogger app

Finally! I can blog on the go!

Welcome back

After a full year, I am starting to post here again! The first change is that I started to use one of those new (or are they? haven`t been here a while) Blogger templates. While I guess they'll be very generic soon, the good thing is this means that there is a mobile site attached.

I haven't yet decided what the breadth of this Survey of Creativity will be but assuredly, there will be business and there will be politics. Stay tuned for more!

Omar Khadr – Child soldier

I’m trying to understand what the problem is in Omar Khadr’s case. He’s currently 23 years old but was caught in Afghanistan 8 years ago. To me, living in 2010, a 15 year old is a minor. It was clear, to me, that a 15 year old soldier was a child soldier and should be treated as such. Furthermore, this was only one of the many problems with the case: potentially inadmissible proof, the treatment of a child as an adult and the whole Guantanamo prison fiasco. But to me, the one clear thing is that he was a child soldier!

 

Legally, it seems to be not so clear. Not only is 15 year old the threshold in many texts but the countries themselves define how to react to another country’s child soldier. The USA might not have been in the wrong in arresting him… but then, he wasn’t treated as a soldier at all. He was treated as a person who killed an American citizen. The problem is that, it should have been one or the other. Either he was a soldier protected under international conventions or not, and given the benefit of doubt until proven guilty.

 

As a Canadian citizen, the government should have pushed to have him stand a fair trial and it is not too late to do so. The government must seem active in this high profile case and show that, at the very least, a Canadian citizen can expect justice. It really pained me to hear Khadr’s lawyer dismiss the judge as against them and saying that it was such a sham that their only hope would be to sway the jury. And, to all people saying that, if he wasn’t a terrorist, 8 years in gitmo would have made him one, while that may be true, it could also be the opposite. Morally, we need to think: Do we want an innocent person in prison (if he is one…)? Even if that made him mad, there are mental institutions for such cases.

3 parents for 1 child

This week,I've heard about legislation in British Columbia that aims at legalizing the idea that a child can have more than two parents. Obviously this is something that might create some technical or legal problems but really, morally, there is no reason to not allow this (as far as I can see anyways).
Are there any reasons as to why we shouldn't have such laws?

Understanding a decision

Important news came on Friday to those working in the pharmaceutical industry in Canada. After the drastic price reduction of generic drugs in Ontario, the Quebec government announced that those prices would also be in effect here.

 

The government expects to save about 164 million yearly and Quebec residents can expect to pay less for their generic drugs. Due to competition, even innovator drugs that have a generic counterpart might see a price drop. This is significant change and is something that seems beneficial to the citizen.

 

From the generic industry’s point of view, however, this is catastrophic. The reduction in the profit margins will be substantial and, frankly, jobs are in danger. I’m part of that industry and I wondered what this meant and how much of an impact that would have on Quebec’s society. Even though most drugs sold are generics, the industry itself accounted for 23 percent of all of the biopharmaceutical industry’s workers. Even though the recent recession probably increased its weight, the fact remains that it was not central to the sector in the province. In fact, the strengthening of the innovator industry against the generics has been key to the development of the strong biopharmaceutical growth in Montreal. At this point, I also want to point out that this strategy meant that qualified people would be retained or come to the Montreal region and that in turn, this would mean that the area would become a prime pool of workers for the generic industry. The end result made Montreal a strong innovator and generic pole. The focus of the provincial government, however, was innovators.

 

With this in mind, we need to go back to March 2010 and the much talked-about Bachand budget. The budget, asking for sacrifices from the general population was, in the early days, very unpopular. Even if the government announced in it that they would do all the heavy lifting, people did not believe them. In the meantime, Ontario was announcing that they would slash the prices of their generic drugs, something much better received by the population. The Liberal government here saw this as an opportunity. It could cut from an obscure and relatively small industry, something that would not have strong repercussions.

 

So we are here. The government saving money and gaining political sympathy at the expense of the generic’s industry. Politically, this seems to be a good move and, as I said before, as a citizen, it means that it’ll cost less to buy drugs (whether it is through taxes or through private insurance). Economically however, I’ll direct you to this Fraser Institute article saying how the price setting done by the Ontario government might have been the problem in the first place, a problem that still remains.

Re-blogging: Homelessness with cameras

A while ago, I posted about the idea of giving cell phones to homeless people. This was following an article about a homeless person snapping a picture of the American First Lady. Well, this week, Change.org posted another article about the subject, looking at what happened in the media after the “incident”.

 

The full story here.