I arrived in Oslo yesterday afternoon, met by a dear friend who lived and worked in Bangladesh in the late 1980s. I lived in Dhaka from 1987 to 1991 working for the Ford Foundation. As I was met by a familiar Norwegian warmth under their grey cloudy skies with a cold wind whipping about, we remembered first meeting Yunus 20 years ago and visiting Grameen Bank. He worked in a small rented two story building in Shymoli, Dhaka. While already a success, it was the early days before their massive expansion to now serving 7 million borrowers and their families. It was also before they had exported their approach to reducing poverty all over the world, but the seeds of promise were clearly evident.

The Norwegians are very pleased that their government aid funds were invested early on in the Grameen Bank. They also talk with pride about TeleNor’s origins as a state company that promised to bring phone service to the whole country at the same price for remote rural areas as urban centers.

There has been lots of media coverage in Norway about this year’s winner of the peace prize including one out of date slightly negative story that suggested Grameen Bank was dependent on foreign aid. This is of course not true. While there is an important place for charitable contributions and aid in the early stages of microfinance organization development, Grameen Bank is a fully self reliant financial institution owned and governed by the women villagers who depend on their services.’

There is a press conference today to kick off the Nobel celebrations. But everyone in Oslo is already aware of the winner, and so very, very proud to be hosting the event and recognizing Yunus and Grameen Bank.

I am so excited to be a witness.

Susan Davis

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006 at 12:35 pm and is filed under nobelceremony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.