UMaine Senior Learns about Microfinance, Rural Poor in Bangladesh
Contact: 207-659-1880 or raehathaway@hotmail.com
ORONO — Last summer, in a country where nearly half the population of 135 million lives in poverty, Rachel Hathaway solidified her commitment to a career devoted to human rights advocacy. She plans to do it using microfinance.
“When the five senses are engaged and you see children forced to beg in the streets, when you see women who are desperate to work but are told by their husbands and society they aren’t capable, when these women watch their children starve, you realize the injustice,” says Hathaway, a University of Maine senior who spent 10 weeks in Bangladesh last summer as an intern with Grameen Bank. “The challenges of this country can’t be understood from a big business perspective or textbooks. That’s why I wish more people could go to these countries to see what’s happening.”
Hathaway went to Grameen Bank to learn from the experts in microfinance, a strategy designed to help the poor out of poverty, typically by providing microcredit or small loans to the rural poor in developing countries. She came away from the experience inspired by people’s stories of the difference such a financial strategy can make and determined to help replicate the model elsewhere in the Third World.
“In times of financial crisis and bad banks, it’s heartening to hear of bankers to the poor, the idea of a social agenda for people to work toward, that it’s not about greed but how to improve the lives we’re touching,” says Hathaway, a financial economics and business administration major who grew up in Millinocket, Maine. “I believe we all have this obligation to be community members locally and globally. I hope to turn it into my life’s work in human rights advocacy.”
Hathaway was one of 107 students who came from around the world to learn from the pioneers in microfinance last summer. Her internship with Grameen Trust, which has more than 8 million borrowers and more than 2,500 branches, involved field visits, assignments, and a week with a newly established branch in Netrokona. She also consulted for four weeks on two projects in India.
As part of her internship, Hathaway traveled with a branch manager in an effort to better understand the challenging external environment — from political corruption and lack of modern conveniences like running water and electricity to extreme weather such as monsoon season that required visits by boat to borrowers in the villages.
A UMaine Today magazine article has additional information and details about Hathaway’s experiences.