Organization or Community Sustained?

Conversations in Nepal – Appreciative Inquiry International Conference.

WORTH in NepalPeople are looking for a way to have a sustained organization – not in terms of finance or social/environment, but in a sense of maintaining the mind-set that has been presented. Here is a group born out of Organizational Development. I find it difficult to think about something like that and the example came right here at the conference.

We had a wonderful presentation about sustained change with a group of women’s bankers of a Nepali project called WORTH – the program started as an international aid in 1997 and today – according to them – there’s no more intervention – the program continues and grows by the work of the women themselves.

It was interesting to hear the story of Ms. Odell that received a prize by the hands of Muhammad Yunus. She said to him that Grameen showed the women can be excellent borrowers, and WORTH showed they can be excellent bankers. I have not visited the project in Nepal on the site – as opposed to visiting Grameen’s in 2001 – but the work seems to tackle the very question the group back in 2001 had – and when are the women stopping to take loans from the bank? Is there freedom after the first Grameen’s loan?

And that goes back to the sustained organization and the mindset… interventions like that should be designed to de-institutionalize after some years – this program in Nepal is the example – the institution is gone, but the community sustains the mindset and moves forward.

What is it that we want to sustain after all?

[added Feb 21st 2011]

Interesting article about this:
Microcredit ‘death trap’ for Bangladesh’s poor

Looks like an interesting book about this: