I have been advising the State Government of Punjab for the past two years (in-between my World Bank sponsored trips to Russia). Any poverty-alleviation program, any economic development scheme, any promotional ventures in India, and Punjab for that matter (and in Russia), are based on subsidies. The govt. budgets are in bad plight and economic costs of subsidies are exorbitantly high. Logically, in each report of mine, I counseled with these governments that there are methods to productively assist the poor without subsidizing them. In my seminars and reports for Russia, Kazakstan, Tajikistan, and repeatedly Punjab, I have contrasted subsidized assistance to the poor, which violates the efficiency norms and has not yielded results, against the lending at market cost under the Grameen Bank system, which bears fruit. But I have not been able to sell the idea. 

The government only has to stop subsidized credit and allow the private sector to come up with the Grameen Bank type network. For instance, in Punjab a bank has been started in the public sector, which is also called Grameen Bank. It gives loans to rural poor at highly subsidized rates of interest. And there are scores, indeed hundreds, of other subsidies in the name of poverty alleviation. The whole idea of self-help by paying market costs is lost. The poor are put on crutches. The dependency culture is nursed. Poverty is sustained rather than alleviated.   

Since there is a chance that I will be in Asia this summer, I would like to visit Bangladesh too and look at the Grameen activities. I would like to take photographs or slides that could be used in Holland for brochures and lectures I am planning to give. It also would give me a much better understanding of the procedures that I have been reading about. 

 II very much would like to see what is being done in the head office, visit a branch wiitness banking activities in a (remote) village at a meeting hall, talk to village women, see how Grameen Check is being produced, visit a health clinic, a fish farm, look at a Krishi project, and get some explanation about your latest enterprises: Grameen Cybernet and Grameen Communications. 

 From the Grameen Dialogue l understand that you have many different visitors (from replicators to royalty) and are used to have people looking around in the Grameen kitchen. There is a chance that my GSG-partner Ms. Nanny Stres may also join me.  

 Following the microcredit summit, ENDA - Zimbabwe has adopted microcredit as part of its strategic plan. My organisation was at the Washington Summit and a decision has been made to seek ways of adopting Grameen model in taking up microcredit as part of our development mission in Zimbabwe. 

There is a wealth of experience in working with the informal sector in ENDA-Zimbabwe, but we now realise that microcredit could bring greater impact in attempting to reach out to the poor, especially the woman. 

 At this juncture it is important to come up with a viable scheme upon which capacity and competencies could be built to dispense credit to those mostly needing it. Since the Grameen scheme has been tried and tested, it has been decided by the management that we seek to set up ties with the Grameen Trust, to see if we could be beneficiaries to the technical and capacity building thrust that your organisation has developed. 

 I We need more information about your scheme and would like to know how my organisation could benefit from the Grameen Trust, in trying to set up a microcredit scheme within the development agenda we hold. 

 I plan to arrive Dhaka on April 3rd. My objectives during this visit are the following 

• discover the day to day reality of the bank and its clients, especially at the branch level
• understand the economics of bank operations at branch level, but also in terms of its global equilibrium 
• learn from management principles of the bank, especially human resource related issues such as recruitment, performance appraisal, career development for Grameen employees.
• have an overview of recent new projects.

As I am now in a personal process of defining my next job, it is important for me to come back to what is part of my roots. This is really the main objective of my visit, to understand better why I have been so deeply moved when I read a book on Grameen more than ten years ago. In a way , this is a vocational visit. I come to listen, without preconceptions. 

I hope it helps. 

I am writing on behalf of my organization Partners for First Peoples to express our desire to become a part of the Grameen Bank's replication program. I learned about your program through the Microcredit Summit and Results-Educational Fund in Washington DC. They Introduced me to the ideals and principles governing Grameen Trust. 

We are interested to participate in the intensive training that you and your staff will be conducting in Bangladesh on how to start in our area the Grameen approach to self-sufficiency. Please let us know more about this training, its schedule and other specific requirements. 

Partners For First Peoples (PFP), in a non-profit organization committed to assist the tribal peoples in improving their poor economic condition and help build self-reliant and self-sustaining tribal communities in the southern part of Mindanao islands in the Philippines. We have programs in comprehensive agriculture, health, education and community development. Our program in agriculture includes: reforestation, soil rehabilitation and water sources and forest protection. I work with the education program as a teacher and administrator of the school. We have evolved innovative curriculae relevant to the situation of the tribal peoples and responsive to their needs. 

As the tribal population grows, our expansion plan to reach out to as many people as we could, becomes more and more difficult. When I read about the experience of some families who have become self-sufficient through Grameen's assistance, I was so excited. I see there is hope for the tribal and the rural poor families in our area to become economically better off. 
 

 We propose to create on-line learning community by which you can reach the many thousands of people around the world who are interested in learning about the Grameen way. The course will give users a virtual experience of the Grameen way through the use of video, audio and on-line text based discussion groups. 

We plan to visit Bangladesh for some weeks, collecting and editing audio-visual materials, while working closely with your staff to formulate the structure of the course. Once we have the basic materials, we will place them in a multimedia framework (we have the idea of calling it Under the Virtual Village Tree) here in the USA. You will at all times have access to the development process by way of the Internet as we can provide you with passwords to a development site on the Internet. Indeed, we will test the course by actually using it, and discussing it as we go along. 

A final visit to Bangladesh for the launch of the course and any final adjustments is also planned. 

Thanks a million for a beautiful and worthwhile trip to Dhaka. The 21st Grameen International Dialogue Program has been a highlight of my entire life 

We are a new company in a new age, offering new opportunities for growth, and development of our members and for that matter to all the poor and destitute people in our region. 

The prospect brightens that we at Agency and Brokerage Management Services could get funding and new insights in helping poor ordinary people, especially the poor and powerless women to rise out of proverty and become entrepreneurs. 

This means that for the first time in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, a new class of confident, educated, persistent, hard working young men, and especially women, are emerging to declare total war on poverty, and to hold those responsible, accountable for pilferage and poor economic management. 

Since my return home, I've been inundated with questions about my visit to Grameen and about the work of the bank etc. I have had meetings with my Board of Directors and with the Prime Minister, especially with regard to replication. I may add that they are all excited about replication not only in St. Kitts, but to move eventually into the Caricom Region. 

 Our sincere greetings to you and your staff at the Grameen Bank. Your ideas of microenterprise savings and credit practices have reached all the corners of the world and the benefits to the millions of small businesses are far beyond measure. 

Here at the bank, with the invaluable assistance of USAID, Uganda, we will be, implementing the first grafting process in Africa, in terms of bringing together group based microenterprise banking and standard banking modus operandi. On a personal level, having worked for 7 years in a merchant / commercial bank and another 7 years with a leading international NGO implementing microenterprise savings and credit schemes, this is in fact a dream come true for me. 

Attached is a copy of our promotional poster, and as we have used two of your famous quotations, we thought it only fitting to send it to you. If we do not receive any objections from you, we hope to be able to go to the printers by the end of the month. 

As you know, we have been working in Nicaragua for almost a year, replicating the Grameen model, as we do in Bolivia. It is important to us that our administrative staff have the opportunity to learn first hand from the Grameen Bank in order to understand the model. We also would like to apply for a loan from the Grameen Trust to increase the credit fund. I had hoped that Kathleen might present a preliminary proposal, similar to the ones we have prepared in Bolivia, at the Dialogue as a first step in this process. In addition, Kathleen will also be able to translate from English to Spanish for Mario, who does not speak English. I am also requesting that Mario and Kathleen attend the August Dialogue as their responsibilities preclude them from leaving in May. 

 Our Bolivian program has benefited greatly from attendance at the Grameen Dialogues, as have l. We would like to establish a similar relationship between the Pro Mujer Nicaragua and the Grameen Bank. During our first year here we have organized over 1,000 women into communal banks and begun providing loans and training. We need additional loan funds in coming year i.e in 1998, to provide loans to 5,500 Nicaraguan women. 

After two years of preparation since we had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Jannat here in Sao Paulo, we are now ready to make a full scale pilot project within the spirit and mouldings of Grameen Bank, here in the suburbs of Sao Paulo. This year our initiative will be an independent, autonomous, juridical entity, having its proper contacts with various segments of our society. 

We would very much like to visit the people in Chicago, who are running the Women's Self-employment Project, in operation for quite some time now with subsequent experience in the urban sector of a big city.