a groups of us are travelling to dhaka to host this between june 22 and june 29 more details or requests for publications that dr yunus authorises during this week’s celebration of microeconomics by journalists and practitioners , contact DC – 301 881 1655 chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk http://yunusforum.net

Florentina, I think you are right. We should first change the way people think about themselves, and comprehend the reality of their situation. Teaching people how to think positively is very essential in helping them to be creative in finding new ways to make their lives better.

Raymond Safadi

Nyabinda Naman O.
Dear all,
I would wish to contribute to the concept of TRICKLE DOWN by saying that, in every set up under the sun there must be a starting point which forms the basis of every beginning step. the flow of activities in the value chain system would not look complete if there is point to begin with. The effect of success in the value chain system would count itself positive when all the players in the system feel the impact of their contribution in the value chain. Smallholder farmers back in the village working on the production of onions for nearby arket or urban markets willonly be able to feel his or her contribtuion if trickle down approach is implemented. and in that scenario all the actors in the vaue chain will get their worhtiness in the system.
poverty as afact should not be taken as the a gauging rader that shows how individuals are foolish or weak in their contributions to the developement. but the missing link that needs to be addressed is the wide gap etween the rich andthe poor. in ost cases the rich tries as much as possible keeping his classy standards by remaining at the top while the poor is busy looking for what can make him meet the day to day survival needs. there is no single time the two partiers will come together to forge way forward by brain storming on how to bridge the gap. For the world to be counted as poverty free, we have to address the issue of wide gap between the rich and the poor and both the parties should learn to know that each everyone is important in the society of equal development.
for instance, i would say that “poverty is an incentive to creativity” this has been seen in most of the upcoming economic super powers like Japan. Japanes learnt it hard way after going though the Hiroshima and Nagasaki saga. currently as we are talking, interms of technology, Japan is one of the nations in the world with steady growing GDP and economic technologies and they invest much in taking care of the poor by making each and every citizen productive regardless of your physical status.
Thanks
Naman -AMPATH/FPI

Dear all,

In my opinion trickle down is contributing to poverty alleviation but can not result ito a povrty free habitat. This is because the apitalist system requirs a working class/ labourers to survive and some sectors of the world economy are based on availability of cheap labour. That is were when the cost of labour goes up in one country entrprise those sectors relocate to counties with cheap labour.

Only a structured trickle down based on building capacity of the poor to play roles in commodity value chains by eeither being chain actors or providers of essential support services. This is likey to guarantee fair remuneration and will enable to poor rise out of their poverty in sustainable way.

Hemed Mwabudzo

This is non-perfect world, so we can’t create the world that really balance and free of poverty. What we can do is to reduce the number of poverty and increase the welfare and prosperity of human being. By that way, we can create the better future for our grandchildren. – restaurantes madrid

Dear Peter Burgess,

Thank you for your question about how value may be quantified in a meaningful way in the value chain. I am trying my best to respond your question. In case of Milk market Producer usually sells row milk at BDT 22.00/Liter to Milk Collector. Milk Collector brought milk from village to peri urban/growth centre market about 15 Kilometer ( average) far from village and required transport cost of BDT 1.00 per liter. Collector usually sells milk to Sweetmeat processor @BDT 25.00 per liter. So value addition for distance of 15 kilometer at Collector level is BDT 2.00 per liter. Again Sweetmeat processor produced sweetmeat required average csot of BDT 5.00 per liter and the value of sweetmeat and by product (posset, ghee) become about BDT 45.00 per liter . Therefore Value Addition for sweetmeat processing at Process level become BDT 15.00 per liter.

Is it meaningful for you? If not please let me know what you exactly need?

Mozharul Islam
Sr. Monitoring Officer
Making Markets Work for Small-holder Farmers and Rural Producer project
Markets and Livelihood Program
Practical Action Bangladesh
House 12/B, Road 4, Dhamondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tel office +088-02-8650439,96752

I believe too that it can reduce poverty and promote economic growth by integrating large numbers of micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) into increasingly competitive local, national or international value chains. Erecciones

An International NGOs decided to supply seed to vegetable farmer free of cost in southern part Bangladesh for one and a half years. Poor farmers are happy to know the message. What might happen? Farmer who receives free seeds will be interested to produce more vegetables. If they succeed vegetable production in the area will increase. The farmer who did not receive fee seed will buy seed from open market. As a result production cost of these farmers will be more than farmers who receive free seed. Therefore these farmers will loose interest to produce more vegetables or give up vegetable production. On the other side demand of seed in the market will reduce for huge free supply. So, some seed seller may give up this business. When program phase out, the farmer who received free seeds may continue but they will face challenge to have required seed in the local market because some seed seller closed their business.

This situation exactly may or may not happen, because that program will motivate farmer to preserve seed. As seed preservation is a technical task, these preservation methods may not serve the purpose accurately.

The objective of above example is to give importance on market distortion and displacement effect during program development.

Mozharul Islam
Sr. Monitoring Officer
Making Markets Work for Small-holder Farmers and Rural Producer project
Markets and Livelihood Program
Practical Action Bangladesh
House 12/B, Road 4, Dhamondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tel office +088-02-8650439,96752

An International NGOs decided to supply seed to vegetable farmer free of cost in southern part Bangladesh for one and a half years. Poor farmers are happy to know the message. What might happen? Farmer who receives free seeds will be interested to produce more vegetables. If they succeed vegetable production in the area will increase. The farmer who did not receive fee seed will buy seed from open market. As a result production cost of these farmers will be more than farmers who receive free seed. Therefore these farmers will loose interest to produce more vegetables or give up vegetable production. On the other side demand of seed in the market will reduce for huge free supply. So, some seed seller may give up this business. When program phase out, the farmer who received free seeds may continue but they will face challenge to have required seed in the local market because some seed seller closed their business.

This situation exactly may or may not happen, because that program will motivate farmer to preserve seed. As seed preservation is a technical task, these preservation methods may not serve the purpose accurately.

Terefore we should consider negative effect of ‘market distortion and displacement’ during program development.

Mozharul Islam
Sr. Monitoring Officer
Making Markets Work for Small-holder Farmers and Rural Producer project
Markets and Livelihood Program
Practical Action Bangladesh
House 12/B, Road 4, Dhamondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tel office +088-02-8650439,96752

I read your example as being about what unintended consequences (or inconvenient truth) compounds when you aid one group and not another that are connected by the same market -which of course is where so much aid goes terrifyingly wrong when we plan from global capitals and don’t understand grounded details of how local market integrate globally. As a mathematician taught to integrate from details up http://trilliondollaraudit.com I am appalled at how global professions over the last 20 years have made it their own convenience to spreadheet top down. This is the greatest maths error ever made, quite capable of compounding the end of all us unless we bend the curve soon as obama has invited americans to start asking whether they can

From your story: a question arises- what level do we need to look at to help end poverty; whether we like it or not most global aid forces us to look at national levels -these may be very conveneinent for .gov bureaucrats but they are certainly not how nature’s web ultimately judges the collaborative advantages of the fittest. And fortunately as bill clinton has observed they are not what makes Bangladesh an unique developing economy model the whole world now can access –openly Q&A – through such webs as http://www.yunuscentre.org

So as the paradigm that is most successful in bangladesh is the markets that are whose freedom is sustained by being owned bottom up in trust for the poorest and as per agricultural systems that originally were mapped by brac or grameen but may now be interconnected by a country whose banking works for main street’s global villages in exactly the way that banking does not work when topped down out of wall street

So I am not sure I understand how to help others learn from your case until you contextualise it more in the mcroeconomic worldwide which has thankfully made dhaka en route to any sustainable capital http://www.socialbusiness.tv info @worldcitizen.tv

as a mathematician, I strongly recommend you tear up assumptions of any value chain that assume zero sum groupthink -that’s so 20th C and pre-netgen

today’s networking realities are knowledge can multiply value in use; moreover techology as dr yunus eloquently explained earlier this month to India’s parliament, which may have been invented for expensive markets, can often be replicated at almost no cost for poor markets- think how web code like ebay that makes a market among one group, can be reused to target a wholly different exchange group

to move from theory to practice, as so often have a deeper look at yunus’ next big value multiplying game; he’s no longer much interested in summits on microcredit per se -where he loves to be is summits where collaboration partners meet and value multiply

example – yunus is interested in ending nurseless villages

so in nov 08 he was delighted when glasgow university offered to loan him trainers who educate many of the UK’s nurses to be

next he visited Nike foundation’s girl power group , and got a 5 million dollars fund they announced at Clinton Global 09 to build the grameen nurse institute

he already has a social business partnership with a company that builds hospitals

when nurses are trained they will go to his village health diagnosis and insurance system http://www.grameenkalyan.org as well as encourage grameen shikkha girl scholars at secondary school to become nurses

so here we have at least 4 collaboration partners all multiplying value for grameen nurse and themselves namely university, foundation, corporation and social business owned by the bank for the poorest

this is a wholly different game to play than value chain normally assumes – for more including 12 collaboration partner types see http://www.yunusbirthday.com

chris macrae DC 301 881 1655

Peter – surely http://www.jamiibora.org is the answer to you prayers – for 10 years now it has renewed the organic economy mobilising youth in the transformation of slums. Interestingly in kenya’s riots while small export businesses including flowers had a hard time, JB’s social business microcredit was quickly into rebuilding the Kibera market that had been destroyed as well as renewing youth relationships showing that peace and economic empowerment are a win-win. It has turned thousands of youth who would have been networks of thieves or prostitutes into social business networkers. They even have a peer to peer social business school that professors from around the world come to benchmark. It is the first microcredit to have invested in a complete ecovillage -2000 solar empowered households with its own ecologies of water and sewerage built by and for community members. Its members need for microhealth insurance policies owned and benefits-designed by themselves has helped to rebuild missionary hospitals that were on the verge of closing. It’s hosting what http://socialbusiness.tv microcredit networkers expect to be the best ever http://microcreditsummit.org – kenya april 2010. Yes Kenya Can. And thanks to European Royal Families like Queen Sofia of Spain’s world microcreditsummit 2011 commitment to knowledge transfers between Kenya, African and Spanish speaking microcredit cultures, Yes Southern Hemisphere Microcredit banking Can.

The resource looks great! The only problem is not all NGO’s will focus on this resource if they continue to apply approaches to development that do not enhance processes in the market between market players but take on roles that market players should.

Nyamwaya Munthali Business Linkages Officer Mennonite Economic Development Asosociates Zambia +260977568860

First of all thanks a lot for the great and informative post. It was really interesting and even useful to read about the Value Chain Development Wiki which has launched by the USAID. I have to admit that reading this post I have known many new and interesting things which lately I could use in my work. Also it is really great discussion about this theme. Thanks a lot one more time for the useful information which you have shared with us and I will be waiting for more interesting news from you in the nearest future.

Regards,
Adam Patson from iphone application development

It is evident that in the former years of development work, giving and giving and more giving was the easiest approach adopted by all debvelopment agents. But what this has done is creating a dependant society, a society that relies on hand outs and forgets that they have locally available resources that in one way or the other can be exploited for their benefits. Take for instance: communities living in arid and semi arid lands have continually benefitted from donated food stuff. A more sustainable approach that actually is being aopted by development agents in such areas recntly is identifying the constraints in this environment with respcet to production of lets say cassava or vegetables and providing water ( through construction of small water resevoirs. Then the community is trained on how to farm and produce fats maturing crops/drough tolerant both for subsistence and sale. Ideally in the first season seeds and other inputs are provided but gradully in the subsequent seasona the communities are supposed to take up all the cost. The commercial sense in production is inbuilt in their production thus generating some incomes besides increasing the available household foods. This is a more sustainable approach.

NGOs and other development facilitators need to raelise that the communities can move their own develpment agenda and our role should be that of giving guidance. Focus should be identifying the inherent constraints in the sub sectors of focus and try giving market based solutions to the problems. In the onset subsidies may be a must especially in paying for the supporting services like vet care in livestock but again once the subsector has taken off and the producers realize the potential in the sub sector, subsidies should gradually be dropped and market forces let to prevail.

Regards

Fredrick Kasina

It is evident that in the former years of development work, giving and giving and more giving was the easiest approach adopted by all debvelopment agents. But what this has done is creating a dependant society, a society that relies on hand outs and forgets that they have locally available resources that in one way or the other can be exploited for their benefits. Take for instance: communities living in arid and semi arid lands have continually benefitted from donated food stuff. A more sustainable approach that actually is being aopted by development agents in such areas recntly is identifying the constraints in this environment with respcet to production of lets say cassava or vegetables and providing water ( through construction of small water resevoirs. Then the community is trained on how to farm and produce fats maturing crops/drough tolerant both for subsistence and sale. Ideally in the first season seeds and other inputs are provided but gradully in the subsequent seasona the communities are supposed to take up all the cost. The commercial sense in production is inbuilt in their production thus generating some incomes besides increasing the available household foods. This is a more sustainable approach.

NGOs and other development facilitators need to raelise that the communities can move their own develpment agenda and our role should be that of giving guidance. Focus should be identifying the inherent constraints in the sub sectors of focus and try giving market based solutions to the problems. In the onset subsidies may be a must especially in paying for the supporting services like vet care in livestock but again once the subsector has taken off and the producers realize the potential in the sub sector, subsidies should gradually be dropped and market forces let to prevail.

Regards

Fredrick Kasina

Frederick I think you will find Hilary Clinton speech in Washington DC recently a breakthrough.
http://www.muhammadyunus.org/In-the-Media/secretary-of-state-hillary-rod…

In it she says that except in emergency USAID needs to get out of aid and into investment empowering community development. As someone who is passionate about the consequences of system design I think this is the best news I have read in a long time and I do commend the Bangladeshi invention of the system Dr Yunus calls Social Business as a benchmark for those who decide community empowerment is the way towards millennium goals and indeed sustainability -the loss of which at a community level seems to me to be consequence of a compound system failure.

To think of poverty as a system failure the way DR Yunus has taught me to raise the issue begins like this:

What’s human race of ending poverty about? Simply in much of developing world : it is about ending today’s one in seven chance that a child will be born into no family or an illiterate one, with too little clean food, water and energy, with a high chance of death before 5, the likelihood of having to work on the streets by age 11. This isn’t the fault of the child- it is due to failed system design globally and locally. I would love to know of webs of people who think like this and develop system interventions. I try to bookmark where they are at http://www.developmentpartners.tv chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk washington DC

The odds may vary and the description of being an unlucky child born into poverty in a developed nation does but as yet almost every nation also needs to end poverty’s system failure in its own backyards. It might surprise some people but the most famous news magazine of ending systemic poverty was founded in 1843 by a microeconomist alumni of Adam Smith whose original free market model was about the transparency and community empowerment markets need to be free. It was called The Economist and for about 140 years it did question investments from the viewpoint of healthy society generates strong economies not vice versa. Then I believe it lost its way as fallible globalization and macroeconomics took over.

If dad http://yunusforum.net/?p=80 . London Yunus Forums & CreativeLabs http://londoncreativelabs.com/conversations/ and I are micro-economically and humanly correct in translating the 250 year gap between Adam Smith frames and the Glasgow Yunus Centre lecture of 1 December 2008 http://yunusforum.net/?p=72 then both the good news and the bad news is we can compound tremendous advances in development but only if we change the maths we value in selecting and governing projects budgeted for. If the Development world chooses to empower Obama’s Yes We Can in the field of foreign assistance then ironically it may later be possible to empower communally Yes WE Can back in the USA. I believe the stage is set (thanks notably to Queen Sofia of Spain) for 12 months of networking dialogues on doing this beginning in Obama’s fatherland with http://www.microcreditsummit.org Kenya April 2010 and rising to a first microeconomic celebration at the world microcreditsummit in Madrid under the direct patronage of Queen Sofia.

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Dear Bista,

I think sometimes aid may create scope for new useful investment. On the other hand bad investment can be a cause of market distortion that in the long run may increase number of people dependent on material aid.

When we are talking about investment we should be clear about following 4W (What, which, where, who) and one H (How). Suggestion of investment without market assessment is just advising small- scale producer (product or service) to jump from an unknown hill at a dark night.

\Most of the development program misused development fund in the name of livelihood promotion. We observed that many development programs facilitate small-scale producer (SSP) to produce product or services without understanding markets. Those program staff have been even take the responsibility of selling those items. After the end of program those dependent producer fails to sell their product / services in the competitive markets and back to previous status. This is a common scenario we have been observing most of the developing countries. I would like to request those program developers to stop such misuse of global resources.

Cash or materials resources are always not easy solution of poverty; rather this approach makes people dependent and lazy. I support material aid at time of emergency and for only physically and socially vulnerable peoples or ultra poor. But this approach should not be applied for SSP or poor.

Aim of our development program should be make SSP empowered so that they have enough capacity and strength to utilize market power in favor of them. Program should build/ nourish and strengthen SSP organizations and create scope to link SSP product with high valued and higher volume market.

Duty of market development facilitator is to develop value chain and service market so that both productivity and income of SPP increased substantially. For this purpose work of market development facilitators should not limit only SSP rather they should work with both forward and backward actors to devise sustainable solution, identify solution provider and develop interventions.

Business environment in the development countries is not enabling for SSP. Market development facilitators should facilitate stakeholders to form network. These networks should facilitate to meet time to time. Program should facilitate these networks to become functional for creating business embalming environment for SSP.

As market is always dynamic, market assessment should not be the work of program staff it should be customized for SSP so that they can easily assess their markets as and when required.

Best,

Mozharul Islam
Sr. Monitoring Officer
Making Markets Work for Small-holder Farmers and Rural Producer project
Markets and Livelihood Program
Practical Action Bangladesh
House 12/B, Road 4, Dhamondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tel office +088-02-8650439,96752

Changing the way we think must be our main priority. We need to think deeper about the situation before reacting on it. Moreover, we need to learn that thinking positive can actually make a difference.Ann@Wii softmod