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[Music] you've been dedicated to the microcredit concept long enough to be able to
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observe the children of that first generation of women that you helped going back to 1976 and the $27 that you
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loaned to 4 2 women in a small village how are these children who are now adults doing are they creating jobs for
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other people are they starting their own companies are they adding societal wealth to the community and just by the
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very fact that these this new generation of of people still need help does that suggest that you have a long way to go
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with microcredit or how does that how what does that say about the success of the movement microcredit is the first
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step you build up step by step many other things like insurance program Savings Program and many other programs
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around it uh we have encouraged the CH uh borrowers of gramine bank to send the children to school because they
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themselves are illiterate their their husbands are illiterate their parents are illiterate uh so we thought let's
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break that Circle here send the children to school so that your children will be
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educated and they will be literate at least and we succeeded in doing that having all the children in school so so
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that was a very happy kind of experience for us that uh uh not only we giving them loans to the borrowers but at the
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same time we have helped them to uh send their children to school uh and then we
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saw lots of these children are doing excellent results in the schools some of them coming up at the top of the class
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so we kind of got thrilled by the performance of some of these kids coming from totally literate totally poorest
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family coming to the class with everybody else now he or she is in the top of the class so we thought this
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should be celebrated so we started introducing scholarships for all the top performing students and gramine Bank
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gives over 30,000 scholarships every year now it's growing it's 40,000 and so
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on every year because the number of children are growing then we saw many of these children are coming close to
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higher education and they have difficulty in getting into higher education because
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they don't have the money to pursue the higher education but the quality wise
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they're as good as anybody else so immediately we introduced Education Loans so that they don't have to worry
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about money so the money is our problem you concentrate in your education so we started giving Education Loans and
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helping them to higher education right now there are more than 35,000 students in under Education Loans going to
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medical schools engineering schools universities so almost in every single um Public University and public medical
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schools and uh engineering schools uh there are gramine children uh who are studying there so whole wave of new
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children going into that so they when I meet them they will always discuss an issue which is worrying them about the
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jobs uh after we finish our job can you help us find jobs and how am I going to find jobs for
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them so I started thinking about it and then uh giving them a new idea that uh maybe they shouldn't be thinking about
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jobs uh and we tell them look you are children from G amilies you are ging children your thinking should be
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different than other children other other people other children they worry about jobs you shouldn't be worrying
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about it you should be taking a pledge and repeat this pledge every morning you wake up and your pledge is I shall never
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seek job from anybody I'll create jobs this is my mission so you are not job
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Seekers you are job givers so think in that terms because your mother you are a fortunate child your mother owns a bank
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not many children have that fortune you have that fortune so your mother's bank
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has enormous amount of money so money is not your problem your problem is what to
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do with your money so think of what what you can do as you go into education and
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do that and then if you feel frustrated you cannot come up with an idea think about your mother what she
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did she didn't wait for anybody she took the money and went for uh business herself she's an illiterate
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woman and along the way she was successful step by step she went on and sent you to school now you are in a
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higher education with her bank and what good is your education if you cannot do better than your mother if
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she can do it you can do much better that's that's the thing that you have to
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prove to yourself that what you your mother gave you a chance and you make use of it and the use is that you create
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a job for others so and start a small and expand it as you grow and bring in more people to help you to grow uh so
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you don't have to wait to finish the school and get a certificate in education uh when you use it for getting
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a job you need a certificate you don't need a certificate when you go into business yourself so
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when you're in school you start the business at the same time continue with it so this is an idea that we and some
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of them are taking this idea and started borrowing from gamine bank and getting into business themselves to to link what
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you just said to uh what we were discussing earlier about social business what kind of social businesses could you
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start around education and is gramine involved in any any such activities we along the health side what
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we have done uh we are in the process of finishing it this year we're starting a
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nursing college as a social business because uh nursing is a good profession we'll be giving uh nursing degrees to
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the young girls from gramine families so they're coming from the poor families
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going to nursing college and gramine bank will give the Education Loans so that they don't have to worry about
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money where the money is coming from and the college will cover its cost and they will get the jobs and will
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produce the nurses in a in a way that they will be internationally acceptable level of Education there are are big
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shortage internationally about the nurses there's a big shortage within the country so each girl will have a choice
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whether she will work in the country or should go outside so this is a social business and they said I don't have to
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limit myself to one nursing college I can have a series of nursing colleges they're paying for
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itself why can't you create as many as you want because there are millions of
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young girls waiting around sitting around doing nothing because they have no opportunities I can create some
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opportunities for them they change their life they change the society because now
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they go out of the village and they go out and work in the hospitals and so on and go outside the country and learn
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languages and so on so this is another example of social business we want to do a Medical College in the same principle
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because Medical College also can cover its own cost and produce doctors doctors with this different kind of orientation
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than the normally you have and then normally a doctor a student doctor is planning to when I finish
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my education I'll start my career and I'll make a lot of money and that's Focus usually happens
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so this orientation would be that when I I come out I want to make sure I can help the health situation in the country
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and focusing on the poor families so how do we do that kind of thing and having a
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very high quality of education so that you have international links you don't
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feel that you're left out because you concentrated on a certain kind of thing
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and you get involved with research of the uh health issues and so on that's another social business could come out
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so education even in education you can use the idea of social business [Music]