Is Grameen Bank an NGO?
April 14, 2010 by
Filed under business group activities
My Business Ethics group assignment is to draft a report on an Asian NGO. We chose Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and our proposal was accepted by the professor.
About a week later, after completing our outline and source list, the professor told us that Grameen was not an NGO. She said we would have to reformat our report, and that we could discuss how NGOs finance activities THROUGH Grameen Bank.
We agreed to restructure our report after our argument went nowhere, but found in further research that many articles, websites etc. expressly listed Grameen as an NGO. It seems as if other smaller NGOs might finance activites through Grameen as well, but found very limited information regarding this.
So, my question is twofold:
1. Is our Professor dead wrong? This is the person that initially refused our project based on her claim that Bangladesh was not an Asian country!
2. Advice as to how to proceed? Are there any worthwhile NGOs that finance through Grameen? Who are they?
1. Yes
2. i dont know
I always thought Grameen bank was a NGO
actually now that i think about it I’m pretty sure it is.
Its obviously no use trying to convince your professor otherwise so I would just find another NGO
unfortunately im not familiar with any, but i would google search it and see what you come up with
Mohd Yunus is NGO but Grameen Bank is not NGO, they make a profit and have yearly growth.
1. Your professor is right. An NGO is a NON-profit organization; however, the Grameen Bank is a business and makes profits. As for Bangladesh not being an Asian country. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are often called ’south Asian’ countries if that makes a difference.
2. To the transnational level of Grameen I don’t think there are many NGOs that work like it. Generally microfinancing works on a regional basis.
Here are a few though.
Care (very good org. they do all kinds of things, but a lot of focus on microfinance)
http://www.care.org/index.asp?error=404&errorurl=http://www.care.org:80/careswork/whatwedo/sead/pub.asp
Opportunity (mostly microcredit stuff, they are Christian) http://www.opportunity.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=193&srcid=-2