Poverty-free: do you qualify?

[flexagon]

How did we define "poverty-free"? After interviewing many borrowers about what a poverty-free life meant to them, we developed a set of ten indicators that our staff and outside evaluators could use to measure whether a family in rural Bangladesh lived a poverty-free life. These indicators are:

1. having a house with a tin roof;
2. having beds or cots for all members of the family;
3. having access to safe drinking water;
4. having access to a sanitary latrine;
5. having all school-age children attending school;
6. having sufficient warm clothing for winter;
7. having mosquito nets;
8. having a home vegetable garden;
9. having no food shortages, even during the most difficult time of a very difficult year; and
10. having sufficient income-earning opportunity for all adult members of the family.

We will be monitoring these criteria on our own and are inviting local and international researchers to help us track our successes and setbacks as we head toward our goal of a poverty-free Bangladesh.

~Muhammad Yunus in Banker to the Poor, a book about microloans and the Grameen Bank

This is definitely a thought-provoking book, and one that's making me think rather differently about a few issues, though I find it impossible to agree with the author's belief that credit should be considered a "human right". Human rights, to me, are something that can still be given or lived by even if everyone were magically dropped naked in a field somewhere. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yeah. Credit, only assuming someone has capital to begin with.

Speaking of microloans, my three kiva.org loans were all in July, and they have all been assigned a starting date of August 07. Tomorrow. Yesenia, Ruth and Grace... you're off and running! Good luck to you!

Comments

[apfelsingail.livejournal.com]

Speaking of Bangladesh, I know someone in USAID who would occasionally take visiting officials around Bangladesh, then tell them to pick a house. They would go in, and he would tell them to count the number of things in the house. And no matter which house they had chosen, they always could, usually within just a few minutes. Granted, this was 20 years ago, but I suspect that in large parts of the country, this would still hold true.

As far as credit being a human right, I think I see where the author is coming from (hope of economic development?), but if you have no hope of repaying the credit, it's a trap.

[flexagon]

Geesh. I have over 500 books alone...