I have been invited to visit Grameen Danone in Bangladesh as part of a Danone training program I am on.
The aim of the Grameen Danone business is to reduce malnutrition and poverty in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. It is a partnership between Grameen Bank and Danone. A small loan is made to a farmer to buy a cow. He/she then sells the milk to Grameen Danone to repay the loan and earn a living. Grameen Danone employs people in a small factory to make the milk into a nutrient-enriched yoghurt and then distributes the yoghurts to over 500 ladies, each in their small community. These ladies then sell the yoghurts and earn a living for themselves. Each yoghurt sells for 6 taka, equivalent to about 5p. Not much - but then the majority of the population here subsist on less than one pound a day...
You can find out loads more on the website of Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in creating the Grameen Bank ("bank of the poor") and who set up this partnership with Danone:
http://www.muhammadyunus.org/images/stories/in_the_media/GDFL_BP_210510.pdf
or on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Danone
There are 7 of us in all on the training program, each from Danone Baby and Medical businesses around the world: China, Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and Singapore. Our project for the next 6 days is to work out how Grameen Danone might extend its approach into the slums of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. So far most of the work has been only with the rural poor; the urban poverty in the big cities can be even greater and no-one has yet been able to work out how to help the people in the slums of the capital using this approach.
Did you visit the slums today? What is the city like? Any more photos? We were wondering if you'd met any children. The photos of them above are very cute. A x
ReplyDeletehi dad are you having an interesting time? is it boring? have you seen any animals? love thomas
hey dad. Hope it's gr8 out there. I saw a picture in the newspaper of a train in dakar and it looked pretty hectic. i've got a maths test tomorrow deciding my set so wish me luck.
LOL
Lucy
Met lots of the children - and yes the are very cute indeed, beautiful faces and bright, white smiles, the girls wear colourful clothes. They are also very small for their ages. There was a 14 year old smaller than Thomas.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't seen many animals - the odd dog, cow, horse, a few birds. But we have been in the capital Dhaka so maybe we will see more when we go to the countryside tomorrow.
It is incredibly hectic. In Britain there are on average 660 people living in every square mile of land. In Bangladesh there are 3000 people living in every square mile of land. That's five times as many. Imagine if there were five times as many people living in Bath but the city was exactly the same size: 5 times more people in every house, in every street, in every bus or train.
How did the Maths test go?