I was in town this morning for a very productive meeting with a friend who’s a local GP to help me explore potential opportunities for social enterprises (aka #socent on Twitter) if GPs end up directly commissioning services.

We’d spotted earlier in the day that Billy Bragg was going to be at Occupy Leeds in City Square at midday, so we wandered across after our meeting finished.

I love Billy Bragg.  I think kids in 50 years time will study his lyrics in the way that we studied war poets.  And there is a coherence and clarity to his view of the world which I find hugely inspiring (even though I’m the first to admit I’m not a socialist).  So it was good to hear a few songs and listen to what he had to say about the importance of the Occupy movement.

It was the first time I’ve been down to Occupy Leeds.  I took a passing interest when Occupy Wall Street started, and got a bit more interested when people attempted to occupy the London Stock Exchange.  But it really caught my  imagination when the protest moved to the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.

I thought the symbolism was brilliant, and could immediately see how moving the protest to the steps of a Christian church was likely to lead to something quite interesting.  But of course I couldn’t have anticipated how much it would shake up the hierarchy at St Paul’s and in the wider Church.

I’m a conflicted, uncomfortable Roman Catholic, born into a Catholic family.  I wouldn’t actively choose to be a Catholic now, but it’s the tradition I’ve been brought up in and it’s where, in lots of ways, I belong.  I also value in some ways the sense of discomfort that it brings me.  But I have no time for the hierarchy of the Church, and I struggle with a lot of its teaching.  Yet I find a niche within it – informed mainly by my year in Ecuador with a social project steeped in liberation theology - that keeps me hanging in there.

It was my patchy understanding of liberation theology that sparked my interest in the protest at St Paul’s.   I was pretty sure that Jesus would be outside in one of the tents, sitting with the people whose demands may be incoherent but who are saying something profound about social justice.  I also thought that the kind of church leader who inspires me – someone like the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero - would be out there with them too.

So that was my way in to the Occupy movement. But I’d be lying if I said I felt that I was part of that movement.  When I was down at City Square this afternoon I found it too easy to tell myself that the people there – camping, speaking, waving banners were people not like me.  I accept that’s not particularly helpful, but it was my honest response.  Got a beard?  Probably not like me.  Read Socialist Worker?  Not like me.  Look vaguely “alternative” in any of the ways that we like to compartmentalise other people?  Not like me. Got a desire to camp outside in the freezing cold at City Square?  Not like me. And there were lots of people there who, I told myself privately, were “not like me”.

But I think that’s the challenge, both to me and to the rest of us – both those who do currently feel totally part of the Occupy movement – and those like me who are intrigued by it and who see how important it is at this moment in time.  And that’s why I think the We Are The 99% slogan is so clever and so powerful.  Because in my opinion we – the vast majority of the world who are at the mercy of modern capitalism (and the vast majority of the world are doing far worse out of it than I am) – need to see that all of us are ill-served by the current economic system.  There has to be a better way.  If we don’t find one, the only question will be whether it’s economic collapse or environmental catastrophe that gets us first.

So I think with time we need to all see ourselves as the 99% – a diverse, engaged and not so engaged, political and apolitical, religious and non-religious, “alternative” and “mainstream” group of people.  So, speaking personally, I can be part of a movement that aims to make the world a much better place than it currently is.  Me, with my lack of political upbringing, my complicated relationship with Christianity, my lack of desire to take part in protests, my interest in finding business opportunities that deliver social change, my pragmatism, and my messy contradictions.  I see myself as part of the 99 per cent now.  Do you?

Money is tight in the world of social business.  Our city-centre office (which to be honest was a bargain – courtesy of this social enterprise) is no more. There’s just no slack in any of our contracts for anything that is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

So we hotdesk with fellow social business Angels Housekeeping, and I work from home a fair bit more.

Working from home has its advantages.  You save a fortune on coffee and sandwiches.  From a green perspective, I bet we’re wasting less food – any leftovers from last night’s tea tend to be recycled into a worker’s lunch.  And my commute up the stairs is pretty carbon free.  Although I’ll soon need a new pair of slippers.

But there are dangers too.  Not just daytime television.  But knocks at the door.  I had one such knock on the door yesterday.  Someone from Scottish Power greeting me by name.  Not my name – that of the previous occupiers.  He was in the area, just “checking up” on things, or something nice and helpful like that.  That’s when it all started to go a bit odd.  He told me that “they’d taken over supply of this area”.  Obviously this is ridiculous and I told him so.  He said that’s what he’d been told – and then he said that they’d become the main generator of energy for the area.  Clearly another load of nonesense.

I cut the conversation short. I was incredulous.  You hear about this kind of thing, but I never imagined that anyone would offer up such blatant untruths.  I tweeted about it, did a bit of googling and eventually ended up chatting to Trading Standards.  At one stage it sounded like they were about to send out a SWAT team to intercept him (they asked if “there is any vulnerability in the area”) but in the end they said they’d just pass it on to Trading Standards in Scottish Power’s home town, Glasgow.  I wasn’t to expect a follow-up call.

I didn’t think that was good enough to be honest.  The reason I was so angry about it is that we do a lot of work with older people’s groups – and they’re always telling us about older people’s better nature being taken advantage of by dodgy sales tactics.  I’ve seen it in my own family with double glazing and financial products.  Carefully crafted patter which disarms many of us – and in particular older people, but which has only one goal – a sale, whether it’s in the best interests of the customer or not.

I searched the #scottishpower hashtag on Twitter – and found out that Scottish Power had just announced that they were going to end door-to-door sales – but not just yet.  They plan to finish encouraging people to switch suppliers through door-to-door tactics at the end of November.

Consumer organisation Which? (of which I’m a member) picked up on my story and wrote about it today.  They’re following this up with Scottish Power and hopefully they’ll take some action.  To be honest I can’t understand why they can’t just end this practice now.  If it’s no longer appropriate on 1st December, I’d say it’s not appropriate today.  How many more people will end up on a tariff which is potentially not right for them – just in time for the winter – thanks to similar tactics?

I’m not a great fan of a lot of big businesses, particularly those that appear to be doing pretty well out of us at a time when most of us are feeling the pinch. But I’m certainly not in the “all big businesses that make profits are bad” camp.  But when, time and again, the big six power companies have been criticised for misleading sales tactics, I find it hard to understand why they don’t just sort themselves out.  Either, you might assume, they’re badly-run businesses (possibly) or they care about short-term shareholder value more than they care about their customers (that’d be my gut feeling).

Let’s hope I’m wrong.  Maybe they’ll show some leadership and end these sales tactics now, instead of waiting until the end of November.

Back today from a great couple of weeks’ holiday – first in Northumberland, then in East Yorkshire.

I really felt like I needed the break. Lots of people have things far worse at the moment, both in terms of work and personal life, but as a small social business we’re by no means immune from the troubles we’re facing as an economy. No-one will tell you it’s much fun to do 20% more work for 20% less money, as I reckon we’re doing at the moment. I’m a believer in hard times bringing out the best in innovation – but there’s always a limit to how much more you can do with less. So it was good to get away for a while – no phone, no Twitter, no TV. Even the car radio packed in, seemingly in solidarity with my desire to escape from the world for a bit.

I didn’t think too much about work. But obviously when you’re on holiday you’re dealing with lots of businesses – places to stay, places to eat, things to do. It’s great when some of them inspire you, and we were lucky to find a few that we fell in love with this time round.

We camped overlooking Holy Island in Northumberland for 8 days at the Barn at Beal – recommended to us by social enterprise structures guru and Northumberland resident Geof Cox. The views were breathtaking and the service we received – as campers and as customers in their cafe – was spot on.

The Barn at Beal is a working farm – we camped at the side of a field of barley which was destined for Timothy Taylor Landlord – and they’ve done a fantastic job of diversifying and thus keeping the farm going.

The second week we stayed at Straw Bale Cottage – a cottage in Howden, East Yorkshire, made, as you might guess, from straw bales. It’s a bit of an interest of mine – you might remember me writing about LILAC – a strawbale development in Leeds. I was intrigued to see what it’s like to live in a strawbale house.

Firstly, there’s something quite exciting (at least for me) about a house that’s built from straw. But more than that there’s a warm, human quality to the way that the house is built – corners are slightly curved and imperfect where they would be perfectly angular in a brick built house.

And as you’d imagine, straw is a great insulator and the house soon warms up when you light the living room fire – the only heating in the house. I’d be interested to go back in winter to see how warm it is then, but you do get a real sense of cosiness.

Both places reminded me of my great admiration for entrepreneurs. People with a vision who put the hard work in to turn that vision into reality. Diversifying from arable production into tourism, or building a straw bale house, requires a level of risk-taking and commitment that I really admire, and I like spending my money with people like that.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a proper holiday if it didn’t involve a few commitments to do things differently when we got back home. A few of these have been forgotten about already. But the strawbale cottage got us thinking again about our own energy use. We’ll look into solar panels in more detail soon, but with the MOT, insurance and tax all due later this month, the time has come to decide whether we’re going to ditch the car. We’ve got our mileage down from 12000 to 6000 miles a year in the last two years, so it’s looking like it might make financial as well as environmental sense. More on that later this week.

They say you never really appreciate the true value of something til it’s gone.  They’re usually right, but not in this case.  Guardian Leeds hasn’t shut up shop yet and I am in no doubt about its value to Leeds.  I feel it also has profound implications for the future of local news gathering too.

For those of you don’t know, Guardian Leeds was a bit of an experiment by the Guardian.  They recruited a beatblogger for three cities – Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, to try out a new way of gathering news.  Exclusively online, and with a remit (I’m summarising here but you’ll get the idea) to find local news, write about local news, link to local news and get other people to write about what they’re up to and what interests them in Leeds.

I’ve written before about my exasperation with much reporting of local news.  In fact, I got into quite a big debate with a local NUJ official (see the comments section) when I blogged about not showing my support for striking Yorkshire Evening Post journalists.  Guardian Leeds has, for me, filled an important gap.  In short, it’s given me news and information that is of interest to me.  Instead of what I tend to get from a lot of other local news providers – crime, fear, regurgitated PR company press releases and community stories which exclusively feature individuals painted as heroes posing for daft photographs.

It’s also given me the chance to get publicity for some of the things that I’ve been involved in.  Without the chance to reach a wider audience through Guardian Leeds we wouldn’t, for example, have got such a good turnout for our public meeting about a city-centre community owned shop.

Yet the Guardian tell us that they can’t make Guardian Leeds pay.  It was an experiment.  And good on them for experimenting.  But you do wonder how they ever thought they were going to sustain a local web-based news service.

Of course the newspaper industry is on its knees, so it’s no surprise that the Guardian hasn’t got any ready cash available to continue to fund a service like Guardian Leeds.  But is there another way?  Maybe we need to find different ways to fund and support a local newsgathering service.  @MattEdgar is encouraging people to pledge £23.32 a month (the figure’s symbolic – it’s the cost of a monthly subscription to the Guardian) to “support a citizen-run news service for Leeds that offers quality writing with a determinedly local focus, but only if 35 other local people do the same”.  It’s an interesting idea – and I’ve just signed up.

Maybe there’s a way to partner with the Guardian on this?  It’d be interesting to know what the maths – how much would it run to continue to run something under the Guardian banner, but with a mix of income, including subscriptions from local people committed to the approach?  Or would it need to be something new and totally local?

I’ll let you into a secret.  I went for the Leeds beatblogger job.  I just thought it sounded like a fantastic opportunity – and as you’ll know, if you’ve read previous posts, I only ever wanted to be a journalist (and a footballer) when I was a kid.  It was a couple of years ago, I fancied doing something different and I was at the height of my powers as a blogger (I’ve since neglected it in favour of Twitter – but I’m going to make the effort again) and I thought I’d have something to offer.  I didn’t get shortlisted – and having seen the quality of work that John has put into Guardian Leeds, I can understand why.

The Government recently announced who will be the Prime Providers delivering Work Programme contracts across the country.

The Work Programme is basically about supporting people to get them back into paid employment.  I don’t doubt for a minute that we need some fresh thinking here, and I’m not opposed to private sector involvement.  But there are various issues which are causing me some concern in the way that things are happening.

Social Enterprise Magazine has done some good work looking into this in more detail.  The Department for Work of Pensions and the Minister for Civil Society have been keen to assert that 40% of the work will be carried out by voluntary sector providers  – as sub-contractors to the (mainly private sector) Prime Providers.  In other words, this is a massive boost for the Big Society.

But it’s not easy to work out exactly where that 40% figure has come from.  A quick look through the letter from Chris Grayling, (see pdf at bottom of article) outlining which sectors the subcontractors on each Prime Provider contract come from, invites you to challenge whether 40% of the fees will find their way to third sector providers.

Take, for example, my patch, West Yorkshire.  The two Prime Providers for our area are BEST and a collaboration between Ingeus and Deloitte.

The letter from Employment Minister Chris Grayling seems to suggest that none of BEST’s subcontractors will come from the third sector, whilst 8.2% of the work on the Ingeus/Deloitte contract will be delivered by the third sector.

That doesn’t feel like a victory for the West Yorkshire branch of the Big Society.

What bothers me here is that it feels like another example of dogmatic belief getting in the way of hard analysis of facts, and experience of how such contracting arrangements may not always work in the best interests of smaller providers.

I’ve written before about how I see parallels between the category management approach often adopted by supermarkets, and the Prime Provider system which the DWP is using.  Whilst, of course, there’s a world of difference between purchasing tinned fruit and procuring job-readiness training, I think it’s worth acknowledging that there is potential for difficulty when a big company (the Prime Provider) is tasked with collaborating with lots of smaller providers.  Government would have us believe that they’ll all play happy families, nurturing the young’uns and small’uns so that together they can share the proceeds and make the contract a success.  I’m afraid I just don’t believe that it will turn out like that in a lot of cases.

Others have written about their concerns about how the Work Programme will pan out.  There certainly seem to have been issues with regards to an over-emphasis on low prices, in place of quality.  That doesn’t bode well – and certainly doesn’t feel like the kind of environment where the smaller, perhaps more innovative, approaches will thrive.

I’m not a great fan of fanfare.  Initiatives which get enthusiastic backing from people who tell me that they have the solution to this or that big issue tend to leave me feeling a bit uneasy.

So I watched with interest, and a fair dollop of scepticism,  the emergence of Start Up Britain, the entrepreneurship initiative which was launched today by a host of celebrity entrepreneurs.

That’s not to say that it won’t do some good stuff.  Just as I think that plenty of good will eventually come from all the debate around Big Society.  But I find myself feeling  sceptical about what I heard about today.

It doesn’t help that if you air that scepticism, as I did a bit, and my good friend Mike Chitty did a good bit more today on Twitter, you are immediately accused of having that terrible British disease, cynicism.  Such reactions are even stronger than normal when it comes to entrepreneurship.  We’re so terribly aware that we aren’t Americans – (after all Start Up Britain is modelled on a similar US scheme) – that we jump on anyone who isn’t whooping and doing enthusiastic high-fives when confronted by a bit of US style razzmatazz.  It’s easier to dismiss your critics than accept that they may just have a point.

I’m not a cynic, but I’m a sceptic, and I think that can be quite a healthy position, particularly if it’s informed by experience.  I’m sceptical about a lot of activity that takes place encouraging entrepreneurship.  That comes from first-hand experience of running businesses, succeeding and failing in business and supporting businesses – particularly start-up social enterprises.

We rely a lot on immensely successful, big scale, charismatic entrepreneurs to inspire the mass of people who are tentatively considering setting up their first business.  I can’t help but feel that there’s a mismatch there, and beyond the transient fuzzy feeling that you might get from hearing a good story, I’m not wholly convinced that such activities are all that useful for many people who are just starting out.

But this kind of thing clearly does work for some people.  Yet I think we forget that most businesses won’t be high growth, and they won’t be leaders in their market.  Of those that succeed, (a majority will probably fail – although I’m not sure that story was told today) many will be good businesses, keeping people in employment, serving customers well, but not setting the world on fire.  That, as far as I’m concerned, is fine – it’s the kind of steady, long-term business activity that we probably need more of.  Not everyone will be pitching to venture capitalists for £10 million to develop a world-beating brand.

So my point is that there are whole worlds of entrepreneurship which are a million miles away from the high-octane, celebrity-filled, soundbite friendly world of Start Up Britain.  And just as there’ll be lots of people who don’t respond to the kind of work that I do – the DIY Business Planning, the Ideas Circles and the like, I believe there are loads of people who, when offered a vision of entrepreneurship that appears to be about high-growth, big egos and fast cash, will end up feeling that setting up in business isn’t for them after all.

So we need different approaches, of course we do.  Let’s hope Start Up Britain (and yes, I accept it’s a startup itself, so it’s early days) encourages different approaches and values the small scale, occasionally mundane entrepreneurial activity alongside the high-octane stuff.

Let Start Up Britain also be a challenge for  those of us who perhaps have a slightly different vision of entrepreneurship, and who consider that there may be other ways to encourage more people to set up in business.  What does my city need?  A home-grown Peter Jones?  Or hundreds of people setting up good businesses, of different shapes and sizes, that fulfill them, serve their customers well and set down local roots?  I guess the answer is that it’d be handy to have both – but to have that I think we need to think more broadly about the messages we give out about entrepreneurship.

Here’s the final guest post from Liam Black in Bangladesh.

Our delegates have flown off back to Google, Rolls Royce, Astra Zeneca, Lloyds, etc and we have settled all our supplier bills. Flight home leaves in a couple of hours. Absolutely knackered but what a great week. Some of my highlights:

Obviously, spending three hours plus with Muhammad Yunus debating the issues round microfinance and his model of social business was a thrill. Grameen has many challenges, some of it works really well, other parts are rickety; Yunus himself can be inconsistent and a bit slippery. But Christ, look at what the man has created.

You can agree or disagree with him on whether the commercialization of microcredit is simply making money off the poor; get annoyed with the stubborn purity of his non-dividend, non-loss ‘social business’ model; or indeed raise your eye brows at some of the claims he makes about his collaborations with multi nationals. But what you cant put aside is the scale of his achievements not only in terms of the people whose lives he has changed – many millions – but the power of what he stands for in the world. It’s about the poor, stupid.

Not only the younger social entrepreneurs in the room were deeply touched and moved by the man. Even old skeptics like me who’ve been around the block a few times were given a reminder of the simple challenge: when it comes to the battle between the interests of the poor and the interests of the middle classes/rich, whose side are you on?

Again I was hugely impressed with the quality and commitment of the Danone people working their French assess off to make the yoghurt business work. Exec Director Corinne spoke with such eloquence and honesty about the “gymnastiques” involved in struggling to balance the demands inherent in trying to address child malnutrition AND create jobs AND  give the village ladies an income AND be environmentally friendly AND be committed to proving it all. Something will have to give in the next iteration of Grameen Danone Foods but wow what balls they have. How different the world might be if all multinationals sent people like them into the battle against poverty.

“We learn by walking,” she said to us, acknowledging the mistakes and set backs they have received. This is a big reminder to us all who care about changing the world. Wait for the perfect intellectual model and business plan and you will never start the walk at all.

I loved the openness and hospitality of the village people we spent time with. The little boy who wants to play cricket for Bangladesh. The mother who challenged me  – nicely but directly – as to what I would do with the information we were getting from them.

Dr Nabi who runs the Grameen Eye Hospital in Bogra – which operates a cross subsidy model but “Liam, everyone comes and leaves by the same door and gets the same treatment” – made a big impression on us all. His ability to change the lives and fortunes of so many people by giving them back full sight in the face of huge odds means – for at a least a couple of week s anyway – I wont whinge about how busy and stressful my life is! I don’t know I’m bloody born.

It’s not all inspiration and love here though by a long way. Dhaka is a horrible hole which is collapsing under its own weight. Power cuts all day, a road system which means it takes two hours to travel ten miles, a corrupt, inefficient and shameless political class more interested in in-fighting and status then the needs of its people. And – killer fact of the week – 2,000,000 people a year – that’s a year – come on to the labour market in a nation with average 30% unemployment. In the face of that brute reality, arguing about the rights and wrongs of commercializing micro credit seems like a quibbling sideshow.

So, taxi awaits for airport. Thanks for reading this. Thanks Rob for hosting.

Home now for some lovin’ with Maggie, a bag of fish and chips and pint of Guinness.

Liam, Dhaka, 12^th November.

Here’s the second guest post from Liam Black, who’s currently in Bangladesh on an Inside Grameen visit.

Phew. Long old day. Up early and drive through the insanity of Dhaka traffic to a Grameen branch one and half hours outside the chronically overcrowded, choked , dysfunctional capital.  The Grameen structure is (from grassroots up) group (of up to ten borrowers); centre (of 30/40); branch of ten centres; zone; head office; board.  All adds up to 8 million or so borrowers in some 2,900 branches.

Met 30 or so lively women borrowers at a centre meeting (the tall white four eyed stranger was source of much merriment), visited the homes and small businesses of a couple of a big success stories . One woman, a 24 year veteran, now has a fine house and rents out rooms to others. She also served three years on Grameen Bank’s national board of directors – of whose 13 members, 9 are elected from amongst the borrowers. And her daughter is soon to graduate as a teacher.  There is inevitably some canny casting and best foot forwarding for the curious visitors on such encounters .  And without any Bangla, understanding can never be complete but it would be a hard heart indeed that wasn’t moved and impressed by the impacts Grameen makes in the lives of so many individuals.

Then to the branch to meet some ‘struggler’ members. These are former beggars who get interest free loans to sell stuff rather than beg. The women – many of whom were hurled into shame-filled penury by a the death of – or abandonment by – their husbands. Awkward session trying to engage with women whose terribly hard lives were obvious from their haggard and deeply sad faces.

And finally the young people who have been the beneficiaries of education loans. These bright youngsters were very impressive and, with their mums beaming with pride behind them, it was hard evidence that Grameen’s intervention can break the cycle of poverty in families.

The issues we will ask Grameen founder and leader Muhammad Yunus about on Thursday are becoming clearer.

What happens after he goes to the big bank branch in the sky?  There seems to be no succession strategy and I’ve yet to meet anyone here who comes any where near being able to take over a 30,000 strong, multi million pound national bank (plus all the other businesses in the group).

Grameen is a social network, a movement built around a deeply held set of values with a range of financial products at its heart. Leading it would test the mettle of anyone even if that person wasn’t stepping into the shoes of a global icon.

What will Grameen 3.0 look like? The challenges are huge. How does the Grameen Bank – literally the Village Bank – deal with urbanization where poverty is perhaps more acute and desperate than in the rural areas and the stock of social capital much lower?

The bank at grassroots is run with biros and exercise books. Where is the IT infrastructure, the use of mobile phones, the process innovation? What happens when the current generation of bank veterans – at national level and at the grassroots – moves on , those who have the founding principles and passions imprinted on their DNA?

Grameen has renewed itself once before. It needs to do that again. I say this with huge respect for its founder and the phenomenon he has created and its stunning achievements over 30 years plus. Renewal of any organization of such a size is hugely difficult and fraught with dangers.

Tomorrow to Bogra – five hours north of Dhaka – to check out the Grameen Danone Foods joint venture which, since I was here a year ago, has a new MD and staff team.

Going to try and sleep now. Again the Grameen conundrum has got my mind working overtime!

Social entrepreneur Liam Black is with a group of business leaders, social innovators and entrepreneurs in Dhaka for a week.   He’ll be telling us what they get up to over the next few days in a series of guest posts.  Here’s his first post.

Just left room full of 20 jet lagged but revved up people recently arrived in Dhaka for our Inside Grameen week. Senior leaders from the likes of Rolls Royce, Google, Barclays, Unilever, IDEO and social innovators like Sam and Michelle from www.livity.co.uk, Rob of www.bbbc.org.uk and upstarts like Lily, founder of www.mybnk.org. We are all here for a week in Bangladesh to get to the bottom of the Grameen phenomenon and its partnerships with multinationals like Danone.

For me there are two big issues for the week:

1. Does microfinance work and what is the role of commercialised micro finance institutions – MFI’s?
2. Is it possible/right to make personal profit from providing finance for the very poor?  More of this second hot potato later in the trip.

So, does microfinance work or is it a hyped and marginal movement distorted by the high profile of microfinance godfather and social entrepreneur superstar Yunus and his amazing abilities to communicate and enroll the elites of the western world?

Development experts argue about the efficacy of micro-credit (i.e. small loans) as a route out of poverty. One indisputable fact is that after 30 years of microfinance – offered by Grameen and other large suppliers such as BRAC – Bangladesh remains pretty much as poor as it was in relative and absolute terms at independence in 1971. There has been no knock out micro-financed blow against poverty.

There is surprisingly little independent research into Grameen’s work and its real impacts on the lives of poor people in Bangladesh. In 1998 the World Bank reported that 5% of Grameen Bank borrowers moved out of poverty each year. In 2003, Shahid Khondkar again on behalf of the World Bank concluded: “The results of this study strongly support the view that microcredit not only affects the welfare of participants but also the aggregate welfare at village level”. Yunus claims – based upon his own internal survey that “56% of [Grameen’s] borrower families have crossed the poverty line by 2005, on the basis of ten indicators set by Grameen Bank to track impact of its programme”.

Few commentators approach this subject without an ideological axe to grind, but most critics of micro-finance and Grameen – whether from the left or the right – concede that the movement has undoubtedly done a great thing in bringing financial services to poor people and offering an alternative to unscrupulous loan sharks and, by focusing on women, may have contributed to building up their position within society.

But they challenge the overall impact such moves have had on ending poverty. Some critics have questioned Grameen’s claims about the high level – 98% – of repayment and say this is because of clever accounting and rolling over loans to massage the figures. A detailed Wall Street Journal investigation in 2001 made this claim. This is rejected by Grameen.

The New Yorker magazine carried out an extensive investigation into microfinance in 2006:

“Hyperbole distorts the debate on both sides. Yunus speaks eloquently of eradicating poverty, but some argue that microfinance burdens the very poor with debt. Since relatively few rigorous studies on the impact on microfinance have been completed, ideology tends to dominate”.

In India, the government has recently stepped into the unregulated microfinance market and suspended the activities of some providers. There are claims too that anxiety about debt has led to suicides amongst the people. This is strongly denied by the MFI’s involved (which include social entrepreneur golden boy Vikram Akula of SKS who has recently become very rich by ‘privatising’ his MFI)

Meanwhile some Indian MFI’s recently agreed to reduce the interest rates that they charge to borrowers.

New York University’s Professor Jonathan Morduch is a long time researcher in this field who says that there is clear evidence that microfinance can help the very poor but warns that credit alone is not a panacea. It no doubt helps many individuals but loans to the poor have yet to demonstrate an impact on aggregate poverty levels. Quoted in the New Yorker, Professor Morduch said that: “The boldest claim for microfinance – that it can eliminated large part of world poverty –outpaces, by a long distance, the evidence accumulated to date”.

So, much to ponder as we go deep into Yunus rural heartlands on Sunday to meet those who borrow money from him and prepare to debate the issues with the Professor himself next week.

Liam, Dhaka, 5^th November 2010

Things feel pretty gloomy this morning.  I’ve been spending the last couple of days telling myself and others that we need to stay hopeful.  That the word prosperity has its roots in the latin word for hope.   That we don’t need growth as we’ve always known it anyway.  We’ll work it out, I tell myself.  There are opportunities here, we must look for them, not lose hope, I keep repeating.

And I do believe all that stuff.  I have to, because I think if you don’t, you might as well just give up.  And I’m not prepared to do that.  I  have a son who’s 4 and we owe it to his generation to try to think of ways to work our way out of this mess.  But that doesn’t stop it feeling pretty bleak this morning.

I grew up in Liverpool in the 1980s.  I was 7 when Thatcher came to power.  I’m not pretending that my life was all Boys From The Blackstuff gloom, far from it.  But Liverpool, caught between Thatcherism and Militant, was a pretty grim place in the 1980s.  The city is recovering, but has never really recovered.  Many families and communities were scarred for life.

I haven’t digested all the news from yesterday yet so I don’t really feel like blogging about it today.  So in true blogger style I’ll just talk about myself instead.  What am I going to do now?

If I truly believe in my strapline – make it your business to change the world – then I need to see our current situation as a big opportunity to make a difference.  Once the cuts start to hit there will be service after service which people say “We can’t lose that”.  Amidst all of that, some of those services could be run by people themselves.  Perhaps I can help there.

But I’ll also need to help by working with people to be realistic about opportunities.  Lots of my work is done in areas where there is market failure – where the market has been propped up for years by funding of one kind or another.  Sometimes even the most socially entrepreneurial group of people can’t do anything if the State retreats and takes its money with it.  Or, the best they can do is think of a totally different way to meet the need.  We need to be careful to not go down a load of dead-end streets which just waste everyone’s time and cause more anger.

And personally, where will I get my work?  Like most people in the social enterprise sector I am overly reliant on the public sector to fund my work.  I know the dangers in that but that’s where the money’s been.  I don’t work in a sector where entrepreneurs come to me, wanting to spend some of their money on me.  Other people pay me to work with entrepreneurs – Business Links, local Councils and the like.   That money is going to be thin on the ground.

Big Society, I hear you cry.  There’s a big opportunity there.  Perhaps.  But as I suggest above, social entrepreneurs aren’t social alchemists.  Big Society will need investment, on a big scale, and a big change in mindset.  How, for example, will third sector organisations, accustomed to funding, go about setting up new enterprising services?  They’re used to finding funding for salaries etc for the start-up phase.  If they’re not there, will they find other ways to bootstrap the start up?  Or will they just not bother?

So I will need to continue to find new ways to work.  I’m not your average consultant, and I’m by no means a clock watcher, but I still get paid, generally, on day rates.  That’s likely to need to change.

I’m onto it – with my business partner Gill I’m running a DIY Business Planning course next month.

The next few years will be very DIY – as the State retreats people will need to become more resilient and do things themselves.  This is our first attempt to meet some of those needs.

So I don’t feel gloomy, but I feel realistic.  I feel hopeful, but I’m not stupid.  I know full well that the next few years for me will see me fielding lots of interest from people who want to do something, but don’t have any/much money to pay me to do it.  So I’ll have to think of different ways to work.

My interest, and concern is in how we hold together as a society in times like this.  Clearly the cuts will hurt a lot, but its the cumulative effect, the possible loss of hope, and loss of a vision for a better society, which is most worrying.  That’s the world I work in.  So I need to get to work.