I have now been in Dhaka a week and think I am just about getting used to the what and humidity! I have been keeping myself busy talking to people in Dhaka where it seems everyone has some kind of microfinance but the translation between their native mother tongue Bangla and English has been challenging, with only a few speaking fluent enough English to talk at length.
I also decided I would visit some sights in Old Dhaka and agreed a price with a driver and set off only to arrive at a shopping mall 10 minutes later with him grinning happily and telling me it would be better as I could buy things and would not get caught in the monsoon rains. It took quite a bit of convincing him to take me where I actually wanted to go but eventually I got there and managed to see the old buildings of Dhaka University and Lalbagh Fort among other sites.
I had planned to be to go visit the Grameen Bank (this is where microfinance started and a lot of microfinance is based on the Grameen model) but this was in the end not possible as they were too busy (maybe the early closing times due to Ramadan was a factor), so that was very disappointing.
I have however been able to visit Muslim Aid and travelled to a village in rural Bangladesh to see how they distribute their loans. Whilst there I managed to speak to a local group who were meeting there. It was very informative and a big thanks to all the Muslim Aid team for making me feel so welcome; they do really good, socially worthwhile, work.
I have just got back from TMSS who I visited today. They are the 2nd largest NGO in Bangladesh and the 3rd largest microfinance institution and have a system very different to almost all I have previously encountered. It is called the H.E.M. model and incorporates health, education and microfinance into one package; it seems to be very successful and this is shown by TMSS having the highest rates of retaining clients in Bangladesh.
The next two days are the weekend here and it is impossible to carry out any visits due to the organisations totally closing down but before I leave on early Wednesday I have 3 more visits, including my visit with BRAC Bangladesh which I had to rearrange from last week.
Thanks for reading! The blog is coming up to nearly 1000 unique visits so its good to know someone is looking at all this :)