Jun
4
2008
The mothers of all cell phones: Cell phones empowering Bangladeshi women
Author: Robin BrowneThe things that are going on in the world that we don’t hear much about blow me away sometimes. And here’s another one from the Grameen Bank microcredit masters…
Eleven years ago, the Grameen Bank launched Grameen Telecom which runs the Village Phone program that leases cell phones to poor Bangladeshi women who then sell telephone services in theirs and adjoining villages. From the Grameen’s 2006 annual report, "The mobile phones create a new business opportunity for the women and bring access to information, market, health and other services to the remote rural areas of Bangladesh. This was a major innovation; placing modern cell phones in the hands of the woman from poorest households in remote villages, something that no telecom operator had dared to do in the past. With Grameen Bank financing, a woman buys a mobile phone to become the Telephone Lady of the village. She provides the telecommunications services to the village while earning profits for herself. Bangladesh is believed to be the first developing country in which a micro-credit institution has relied on cellular technology to make a telephone service abundantly available. By the end of 2006, there were more than 278,000 village phone ladies."
That’s right: 278,000….
So, the women provide themselves with vital income and the villages with vital telecommunications services. How vital are these services? Well, according to a 2003 evaluation done on the program Bangladesh has "has one of the lowest phone penetration rates in the world [with] only 3 landline phones for every 1,000 people."
Now maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but this story got, and continues to get, no coverage in the mainstream press despite the fact that it’s innovative as hell and has helped 278,000 women.
This speaks to the need for social economy marketers to read widely on the web to find, and learn from, untold stories like this one.
photo from the Grameen Bank 2006 Annual Report
