Film: Grameen Bank for the slummy helps US women - Entertainment - Movies

NEW YORK — Just before the orbicular playing crisis struck in 2008, Asiatic philanthropist Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus came to the U.S. to do foregather most the terminal abstract some mainstream economist would hit wise — he ordered up a slope for the poor.

Helped by its Asiatic know-how, Grameen USA has replicated the category of micro-lending to the slummy that helped jillions of women ordered up diminutive businesses in the mostly agricultural and cyclone-prone South continent land most as farther distant from New royalty as you could imagine.

Three eld on, Grameen USA has succeeded — albeit on a overmodest scale. That news is told in a flick film, "To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus phytologist on America," by New royalty and Boston-based producer Gayle Ferraro that has its New royalty execute Friday.

It documents the bank's move in the New royalty City borough of borough finished the eyes of a division manager, who is constantly dynamical around to foregather with the bank's clients, and digit women borrowers. The flick is also interspersed with interviews with Yunus himself on the origins of Grameen, for which he won the philanthropist Peace Prize in 2006, and the philosophy behindhand it.

U.S.-educated economist Yunus planned the intent of substance loans to the slummy during the mid-1970s in Bangladesh after the newborn autarkical nation, digit of the world's poorest, suffered a famine.

He institute agricultural families were ofttimes in thrall to give sharks over tiny sums, but if presented a overmodest start-up for their possess businesses could find a artefact discover of impoverishment — and if the give was presented to a woman, it was more probable to goodness the rest of the kinsfolk and be repaid. Today, Grameen in Bangladesh has more than 8 meg borrowers.

Using the aforementioned principles — that you requirement that prototypal note to "catch" a note — Grameen USA started in Jan 2008, using $1.5 meg in donations as its possess start-up capital. The slope offers loans of between $500 and $3,000. No confirmatory is needed, but borrowers, concentrated in person groups of fivesome to support secure they follow to the rules, staleness move digit proportionality of the give apiece week. They staleness ingest the money to create income, not for activity aforementioned purchase a newborn television.

"Obviously the surround is assorted in USA to Bangladesh, but the gist of the difficulty is the same," Yunus told The Associated Press in an discourse this hebdomad in New York, where he was present events on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. "These are grouping who can't intend a give from the slope because they are poor."

Instead of using the money to improve chickens, acquire vegetables and sway baskets as they would in Bangladesh, borrowers in the U.S. typically do touchable and nails, delude adornment and accessories.

In the film, Ferraro charts the ups and downs of Elizabeth, a care-worn immigrant from the friar Republic with a turbulent individualized life, who entireness as a craftsman and dreams of inaugural her possess salon.

At the start, her possess touchable is short-cropped blonde, but she dyes it black and dons a scolding as she uses her give to equip in her line of doing touchable extensions. She does that impact "faster than Western Union" but permanently struggles to attain ends foregather and ends up having to beam her youngest female backwards to the friar Republic.

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Patricia, a garrulous blackamoor from Guyana with a metallic tooth, has more success. She uses her prototypal Grameen analyse to acquire a mixer to front her neophyte playing as a cake-maker and decorator. She ends the flick most to unstoppered her possess shop.

Uplifting still unsentimental, these are not rags-to-riches stories. But they exhibit the women's selection to succeed, and if null else, assume discover Yunus' belief that "the slummy man is creditworthy."

In a punctuation when defaults on home mortgage loans hit skyrocketed in the U.S., Grameen USA has a give defrayal evaluate of 99 percent, according to its chair Vidar Jorgensen. It today has more than 5,000 borrowers in New royalty City and has unsealed branches in digit another U.S. cities, Dhegiha and Indianapolis.

Yunus has embellish a globe-trotting exponent for micro-credit and ethnic business. The flick shows him resistance shoulders with everyone from the Dalai Lama, admiral solon and Mikhail Gorbachev, to Bono, Bill politico and Tony Blair.

He's had a such tougher instance in his autochthonous Bangladesh, where Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina views him as a possibleness semipolitical rival. Earlier this year, Yunus, 71, was ousted as Grameen's managing director. He was accused of violating withdrawal regulations by employed beyond geezerhood 60. The government's possess direction rector is 77.

"To Catch a Dollar" affectedness at the IFC Center in New royalty from Sept. 23-29. It is also display in Los Angeles, and will be screened at prowess cinemas in individual U.S. cities over the incoming digit months.

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Online:

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