SMALL LOANS, BIG DREAMS

A panoramic account of efforts to relieve poverty with microcredit programs.

Nonprofit consultant and author Counts astutely observes that, throughout history, poverty alleviation often focused on the weaknesses of disadvantaged communities, rather than their strengths. He agrees with Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’ theory that the people who manage to survive great deprivation are often “highly motivated entrepreneurs” who need organizations and structures to flourish. In this rigorously researched and granular account, the author surveys the history of Yunus’ devotion to microfinancing as well as his founding of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in the 1980s to provide small loans to hardworking but cash-strapped entrepreneurs. Yunus’ methods were revolutionary, Counts notes, as they focused on customized solutions for different localities and borrowers: “He believed that the entire exercise in planning should be turned upside down so that the national plan is mainly the sum of thousands of smaller plans developed at the village level.” Counts ably defends Yunus against potential detractors, whom the author characterizes as “fickle philanthropists and journalists,” and furnishes an empirically convincing advocacy of his approach, which was promulgated in many other countries by the World Bank. Moreover, he informatively profiles some women in Bangladesh, as well as in Chicago, who found success through microcredit. Overall, Counts’ overview is dizzyingly expansive; readers are treated to a history of Bangladesh, the microcredit movement, Yunus’ career as an economist, and much more—so much more, in fact, that it can be overwhelming at times. However, his prose is crystal-clear throughout, even when broaching technically formidable matters, and he succinctly summarizes the “humanistic values” that undergird Yunus’ economic vision.

An edifying work and a thorough introduction to an important issue of social justice.