RE: corporate inquiry

.By Frank A. Hilario

On 18 April 1906, the Great San Francisco Quake reduced much of the city to debris. He knew exactly what to do. Amadeo Peter ´AP´ Giannini sifted through the ruins of his bank, the Bank of Italy, loaded his wagon with some $2 million in gold, coins & securities, and went back home (Daniel Kadlec, 1998, time.com). Was he stealing it? He was stealing time. AP didn´t wait for the other banks planning to open in 1 month; in 6 days, he set up his new ´bank,´ which was a wooden plank set on top of 2 barrels, and proceeded to extend loans ´on a face and a signature´ to small businesses and small people to help them rebuild less their business and more their lives. He was banking on the little people.

He didn´t apply the old banker´s rule that I will lend you money only if you can show me you have money. In other words, he was not lending money; instead, he was giving out hope. Was his trust in the working class misguided? It wasn´t. AP´s bank grew and extended beyond San Francisco, had branches from coast to coast, and eventually became the Bank of America, which he had made into the largest bank in America at the time of his death in 1949. (It´s #2 today, behind Citigroup, $572 B vs $751 B.) AP is the only banker to make TIME Magazine´s ´Builders & Titans of the 20th Century.´ He is my Working Class Hero!

Not only that. AP was not averse to risk when it came to the poor, but he was averse to riches. He is my Working Glass Hero! (I wear glasses when I work.) ´I don´t want to be rich,´ he said. ´No man actually owns a fortune; it owns him´ (quoted by ANN, 2008, entrepreneur.com). Personally, I have always been averse to the risk of rich. When I was that high in our village of Sanchez somewhere in Central Luzon, Philippines, I saw how miserly our neighbors-relatives were who were better off, and I thought that their wealth made them so, so I vowed never to become wealthy, including never to marry rich. And, to be frank and honest, I have kept that promise, even at the cost of breaking a heart -- mine.

AP also said, ´I have worked without thinking of myself. This (is) the largest factor in whatever success I have attained´ (quoted by ANN as cited). One in a million soul.

By Frank A. Hilario

In Bangladesh, another fellow, another rare hero has been working without thinking of himself. He is Muhammad Yunus.

In the mid-1970s, forgetting modern economics, Yunus wasn´t thinking of maximum profit at minimum service; he was thinking of maximum service at minimum profit. He was thinking small; he was thinking little people. He was a Professor at the Chittagong University in Bangladesh lecturing on economic theory when one day he decided to put into practice what he was not preaching: Lending money to those who had no visible means of paying it back. That is foolish. No, that is faith, ´the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for´ (Hebrews 11: 1 KJV).

How small was it when Grameen started? $27 loaned out to 42 people, that is, it came to a little more than 60 cents to a borrower (Evaristus Mainsah et al, 2004, web.mit.edu). How small can you get? But Yunus had faith bigger than his heart; and the village borrowers of Bangladesh had hearts bigger than their heads – all of them surprised the economics professor by paying him back! That´s gratitude. From the little people.

That started the Grameen Bank, which was formally set up in 1983. ´Grameen´ from ´gram´ or village; Grameen was for the villagers, not the villagers´ leeches, the usurers. (We call them 5-6 in the Philippines, the 20 percenters, who collect everyday.) With Grameen, social pressure kept everyone honest. 23 years later, Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006.

´All people,´ Yunus told the graduates of MIT 06 June 2008, ´are packed with unlimited potential (and carry) ´a wonderful gift inside them. … Our challenge is to help unwrap their gift´ (David Chandler, web.mit.edu). He was asking the MIT graduates to create a new kind of businessman, a society-minded type. ´You can change the world,´ he said. As he had. ´When many little people take many little steps in many little places, they can change the world!´ – Barbara Rutting

Today, micro-credit is a multi-billion dollar industry in many countries. Now, what Grameen and its many copycats worldwide call micro-credit, I prefer to call little people-credit. Give credit to whom credit is due, people! It´s the little people that make it work, not the size of their credit. These are ´minute sums, borrowed mainly by illiterate women, to set up the smallest imaginable enterprises´ and the success of Grameen illustrates the ´bankability of the unbankable´ (Rosemary Righter, London Times, 31 October 1998). Grameen grants to women 95% of the loans (Mainsah et al as cited, 2004). Is this the bankability of women? Maybe. Rather, I think it´s community. It´s village. It´s the bankability of little people who don´t theorize but practice. .

By Frank A. Hilario

In India, members of Team ICRISAT both theorize and practice for the poor.  ICRISAT is the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics based in Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India, a terrific science NPO (non-profit organization) headed by Director General William Dar, since 2000. ICRISAT, among the 15 international science centers under the support and advocacy of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), has been rated Outstanding in overall institutional performance by the World Bank twice in a row, in 2006 and 2007. The World Bank supports the CGIAR.