Free Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus, Alan Jolis

doesn't want me to join the bank." So the group falls back to four, or three, or sometimes back to one. And that one has to start all over again.
    It can take anywhere from a few days to several months for a group to be recognized or certified by Grameen Bank. To gain recognition, all the members of a group of five prospective borrowers have to present themselves to the bank, undergo at least seven days of training on our policies, and demonstrate their understanding of those policies in an oral examination administered by a senior bank official. Each of the members must be individually tested. The night before her test, a borrower often gets so nervous that she lights a candle in a saint's shrine and prays to Allah for help. She knows that if she fails she will let down not only herself but also the others in her group. Though she has studied, she worries that she will not be able to answer the questions about the duties and responsibilities of a Grameen Bank member. What if she forgets? The bank worker will send the group away, telling all the members to study some more, and the others in the group will chastise her, saying, "For God's sake, even this you can't do right! You have ruined not only yourself but us as well."
    Some critics argue that our rural clients are too submissive and that we can intimidate them into joining Grameen. Perhaps this is why we make our initiation process so challenging. The pressure provided by the group and the exam helps ensure that only those who are truly needy and serious about joining Grameen will actually become members. Those who are better off usually do not find it worthwhile. And even if they do, they will fail our means test and be forced to leave the group anyway. We want only courageous, ambitious pioneers in our micro-credit program. Those are the ones who will succeed.
    Once all members pass the exam, the day finally comes when one of them asks for a first loan, usually about twenty-five dollars, in the eighties. How does she feel? Terrified. She cannot sleep at night. She struggles with the fear of failure, the fear of the unknown. The morning she is to receive her loan, she almost quits. Twenty-five dollars is simply too much responsibility for her. How will she ever be able to repay it? No woman in her extended family has ever had so much money. Her friends come around to reassure her, saying, "Look, we all have to go through it. We will support you. We are here for just that. Don't be scared. We will all be with you."
    When she finally receives the twenty-five dollars, she is trembling. The money burns her fingers. Tears roll down her face. She has never seen so much money in her life. She never imagined it in her hands. She carries the bills as she would a delicate bird or a rabbit, until someone advises her to put the money away in a safe place lest it be stolen.
    This is the beginning for almost every Grameen borrower. All her life she has been told that she is no good, that she brings only misery to her family, and that they cannot afford to pay her dowry. Many times she hears her mother or her father tell her she should have been killed at birth, aborted, or starved. To her family she has been nothing but another mouth to feed, another dowry to pay. But today, for the first time in her life, an institution has trusted her with a great sum of money. She promises that she will never let down the institution or herself. She will struggle to make sure that every penny is paid back.
     
     
    Early on, we encouraged our borrowers to build up savings that they could fall back on in hard times or use for additional income-generating opportunities. We required all borrowers to deposit 5 percent of each loan in a group fund. They understood this tactic as being similar to the Bengali custom of mushti chal ("handful of rice"), where a housewife puts away small amounts of rice every day to slowly build up a substantial reserve. Any borrower can take an interest-free loan from the