Dear Alexis, friends of yunus 20 year olds and
younger
as far as I know the dialogue went well; on dr yunus birthday 100 bangladeshis and our 9 person foreign team
were invited to the opening of the new yunus centre http://muhammadyunus.org/new . - in his 20 minute speech in bengali dr yunus stopped to thank international dialogue group for joining in the celebration;
and I even got forgiven for calling mrs begum mother of microcredit
mostofa and your and other people's years
work on youth ambassador5000 was well received as per slide attached the next day in our 2.5 hour personal session ; a delegate
from the british council and 2 senior people from BRAC joined in
mostofa will work next month in dhaka; the idea
is to plant groups of up to 10 students per group on specific themes by 1 sept; students can form their own small friends
team (eg social action group as per chapter 11 of blue book) or a student club or anything in between ; those who select a
particular theme will be put on their own circulation lists at september 1 and asked to tell each other how each is going
to start the year with the theme
would you like to be a theme leader on womens microcredit or journalism of social
business or pretty well anything you choose; I found out that yunus wasnt immediately aware of who is partnering or grameen's
behalf with goldman scahs 10000 women so I will fix that with anne black partner in charge at goldmans , and try to start
getting a list of new york region employers to be who actually support micro up which was one of many great ideas your 10
hours of diocsussions with me helped clarify; I think that our celebration report is probably something that can even be sent
to the likes of jeffrey sachs to get him to come off the fenbce on which side he is on micro or macro? similarly I will be
surveying shareholdres of The Economist- we only need one positve reply per 100 of the great and the good to get flow
bbc reporter paul rose has started blogging http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8130130.stm
Bangladesh is the most crowded place on Earth and will become even more impossibly packed in the next 30 years.
Approximately
20% of its land will be lost to the rising waters brought about by climate change.
Today's 150 million Bangladeshis
also have to face cyclones and arsenic-contaminated water. About half of the population is illiterate and a third live on
less than one US dollar a day.
While others make plans for overpopulation, global warming mitigation and sustainable
development, in Bangladesh, it is time for action. And the leadership is coming from within.
BBC presenter Paul Rose
has travelled to Bangladesh to meet Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the pioneer of micro-credit and visionary of
hope for the world's poor.
He will also visit villages, field projects, and schools; and talk to the country's leading
innovators to report on life at the "front line of sustainable development".
DAY
ONE: SO MUCH WATER, BUT NOT ALWAYS THE RIGHT STUFF
"We must do everything we can to provide enough safe
water for every Bangladeshi," says a representative of the environmental services firm, Veolia.
"Climate
change has meant that our monsoon is no longer reliable and we are desperately short of water."
In the small village
of Goalmari, about a hundred local people gathered to celebrate the opening of the first arsenic water decontamination plant
built by Veolia.
It is the result of another successful partnership between Grameen Bank and big business. Professor
Yunus set up Grameen Bank in the 1970s to provide financial services for the rural poor.
Heavy rain falling in Goalmari almost drowned the camera |
On the stage, Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank officials and local dignitaries all agreed enthusiastically
with the opening remarks.
But at the exact moment we all applauded, the heavens opened with the mother of all thunderstorms.
The noise of the heavy rain on the tarpaulins overhead made it almost impossible to hear the presentations. When the
fabric began to sag and leak there was a scramble to cover those on stage with umbrellas.
We all moved around to the
dry spots, and young lads pushed up on the sags with long poles and drained the water to the sides. Then then the music started.
Girls danced on stage, everyone bopped to the music, while rain poured in through every seam.
There were no
dry places now so we took photographs of our wet selves and had lovely laughing conversations with the villagers.
It
didn't matter that I speak no Bangla or that their English was limited; we were having a great time.
And the event
was worthy of a celebration; The Grameen and Veolia partnership means that these people will now have clean water to drink.
Throughout their lives so far, the only water that has been available to them was contaminated with arsenic.
Traditionally,
people here have used rivers and ponds for drinking water. But by the 1970s, the lack of sanitation and water-borne disease
was killing an estimated 250,000 children each year.
The solution seemed simple: Tube wells for every village. Millions
of wells were sunk and the unlimited cool water and reduction in the child death rate seemed evidence of success.
But
no-one had checked to see if the ground water was safe; in fact it contains large amounts of naturally-occurring arsenic.
It took over 20 years before testing of the well water over the border in West Bengal showed that it was contaminated,
and that it was poisoning large numbers of people.
Early symptoms of arsenic poisoning include skin blisters and dark
blotches. This is followed by internal organ damage and arsenic-induced cancers.
Solving this crisis is a huge task.
It will take longer to test all of the tube wells than it took to drill them.
It will take longer still to set up decontamination
plants. And even longer than that to communicate the problem to the millions of people who remember the well water as something
marvellous that saved them from the surface water diseases.
In the meantime, over 50 million people are still drinking
water that is poisoning them.
So we really did have something to celebrate at Goalmari. The innovative partnership
of Grameen and Veolia started to save lives from the first batch of clean water.
The music stopped, the final messages
of congratulations were sent from those on stage; and the rain stopped immediately. Surely a good omen for the success of
this essential project.
==============================
estelle is working all month in dhaka on films
that youth can show each other on the deeper aspects of how bangladesh's microentreporeneur revolution is changing the world'
she will be co-launching in new york and paris in september, and works closely with the team preparing the blockbuster yunusmovie ;
hope you get a chhance to meet since there is no 20 year old in amerca who | find more credible in wanting to end old banking's
normaly than you
I think I know reasonably well the 6 people who will help dr yunus around europe in connecting
social business knowhow to be every youth's opportunity; now I know where conflicts with youth have enetered
into the global branding system I will make sure they are surgically removed before I waste any more young peoples'
time
assuming I have made progress on that, tell me if there is a convenmeint time to have a collaboration cafe
in new york before september 1, so I can maximise how yunus goodwill networks can help your career flows
with
microeconomics truth - yes we can take down wall streets and berlin walls and every other man made folly that english colonialim
spun for far too many centuries
chris