Difference between revisions 4462808 and 4471277 on simplewiki

< previous diff
next diff >
Grameen Foundation Australia
{{complex|date=April 2013}}
{{Infobox organization
| name              = Grameen Foundation Australia
| image             = 
| type              = non-profit organization
| ceo               = Shan Ali
| location          = Sydney
| origins           = Grameen Bank
| key_people        = 
| area_served       = 
| product           = 
| mission           = To create a world without poverty
| focus             = 
| method            = microfinance  
| homepage          = [http://www.grameen.org.au website] 
}}
'''Grameen Foundation Australia''' (GFA) is a [[501(c)(3)]] [[non-profit organization]] based in Sydney (Australia) created to support the poverty alleviation work and mission of the Grameen Bank, Grameen Trust and their affiliate organisations by giving access to the poorest people to [[microfinance]] and as a result of access to these services, move themselves out of poverty. <br />
"The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world … all we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them." -[[Muhammad Yunus]]

==History==
Grameen Foundation Australia (“GFA”) takes its inspiration from the poverty alleviation work done by Professor Muhammad Yunus and his colleagues at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

In 2006, Prof. Yunus and [[Grameen Bank]] were awarded the Nobel peace prize for “their efforts to create economic and social development from below”.  According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, “Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life.  Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development”.

GFA’s predecessor in Australia, the Grameen Bank Support Group, was started by 10 co-founders (including the current CEO of GFA, Shan Ali) in Sydney in 1994.  The purpose of this group was to promote the work and vision of Grameen Bank amongst the Australian public, media, and policy makers. 

Between 1994 and 1998 the Support Group engaged with the Grameen Bank in a number of ways.  The most fruitful instances of this engagement were:

#In 1994 there were no public or commercial Internet gateways in Bangladesh.  An Internet user in Dhaka wanting to send and retrieve their emails had to dial-in over ISD lines into computers overseas.  The Support Group was able to persuade a Canadian organisation (called International Development Research Centre) to implement an Internet gateway at the Grameen Bank, the first in Bangladesh. Maria Ng (of IDRC), Rob Hurle (of ANU) and Shan Ali went to Dhaka and worked together to implement this project.
#In 1997 the Group wrote a submission on the Grameen Housing Program in Bangladesh for the UN World Habitat Award.  This required on-the-ground research in Bangladesh, as well as accompanying United Nations assessors on a field visit to Bangladesh.  The submission resulted in Grameen Bank winning the 1998 World Habitat Award.
#In 1998, as a founding board member of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Shan Ali successfully recommended Prof. Yunus for the inaugural Sydney Peace Prize.  Since then the Sydney Peace Prize has been awarded to a number of other eminent peace-makers such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and Irene Khan.
 

During Prof. Yunus’ visit to Sydney in 1998 to receive the Sydney Peace Prize, he met with members of the Grameen Bank Support Group and their pro-bono lawyer David Ford, and gave detailed guidance on setting up GFA.  Whilst there are no formal protocols in place for a country to establish a Grameen Foundation, this personal imprimatur from Prof. Yunus became the mandate underpinning the existence of GFA.  In 1999 the Grameen Bank Support Group was disbanded in Australia and replaced by the newly incorporated GFA.
 
In the first 5 years of GFA’s existence GFA carried out [[AusAID]] projects in East Timor, Nepal, Vietnam, the Philippines and Bangladesh.  In the last few years GFA has been heavily involved in poverty alleviation in the Philippines (see below).

In 1994, a similar foundation, [[Grameen Foundation|Grameen Foundation USA]] (“GFUSA”) was started in the United States by Alex Counts (www.grameenfoundation.org). 

N.B: It is important to recognize that there are no formal relationships between the various members of the “Grameen Family”, namely Grameen Bank and Grameen Trust in Bangladesh, GFA in Australia and GFUSA in the United States.   However, there is a strong informal association between these organizations.  They draw upon each other's expertise when required and they are all inspired by Prof. Yunus’s philosophy of alleviating poverty through driving scalable efficiencies in service delivery to the poor and supporting the skills and entrepreneurship of the poorInspiration provided by the work of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, lead to the founding of Grameen Foundation Australia (GFA) in 1998. GFA works to accelerate the impact of Microfinance and Social Business on the world’s poorest people, especially women.

Based in Sydney, GFA is an independent AusAID endorsed charitable organisation that is able to offer tax deductibility to Australian donors.

The Grameen brand, now internationally recognised for its ‘best practice’ quality and sense of urgency providing tools to help the poorest lift themselves out of poverty, originated in Bangladesh in 1976 when Professor Muhammad Yunus loaned a mere $27 to a very poor woman.  Grameen Bank now serves more than 7 million poor families with loans, savings, insurance and other services. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize.

GFA, as part of the Grameen family, is able to access to the vast expertise and experiences of the broader Grameen group as a means of further enhancing the effectiveness of the projects it develops.

Because GFA believes that people everywhere have an inherent desire to improve their lives, the organisation harnesses the strength and ingenuity of the poor by providing them with access to the tools they need to break the cycle of poverty – actionable information, appropriate financial services and unique business opportunities.

The experienced GFA team is constantly working to identify opportunities and create sector-wide solutions that can transform the way the Development and Aid sector works, accelerating the impact of our efforts – impact that, collectively, will one day eliminate abject poverty.

GFA focuses on Asia and has particular experience in developing microfinance and social business activities in the region.

==Mission==

The mission of GFA is to see poor people, especially the poorest and those living in harder to reach areas, to extract themselves from poverty trough micro finance, and lead lives of respect, dignity and opportunity for the long-term. GFA works for  empowerment of targeted populations, not dependence (non paternalist organization).

==Projects==

(contracted; show full)
[http://www.amazon.com/Building-Social-Business-Capitalism-Humanitys/dp/1586488244/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs by Muhammad Yunus]

==Other websites==

[http://grameen.org.au/ Official website]

[[Category:Non-profit organizations]]