After working with Grameen Foundation’s Human Capital Center for a year as an Atlas Fellow, it was time to return to Egypt.  Looking back now on my year-long stay, I realize that I was lucky to have had Grameen Foundation as my host and to have worked with the human capital management team.

Thanks to good timing, one month after my fellowship ended, I had an opportunity to put all the theory I had learned into practice. I was invited to support an engagement with the Lebanese Association for Development-Al Majmoua, a leading microfinance NGO in that country, part of a collaborative effort between Grameen Foundation’s Human Capital Center and Grameen-Jameel Microfinance Ltd., a joint venture between Grameen Foundation and the ALJ Foundation, a subsidiary of the Abdul Latif Jameel Group.  My task was to help facilitate a human capital management assessment – the starting point for aligning an organization’s people practices with its business strategy.  As a native Arabic speaker with working experience in Lebanon and deep familiarity with the assessment, I was eager to volunteer my services through Grameen Foundation’s skilled-volunteer initiative, Bankers without Borders^®.

In Sidon, Lebanon, Sally (right) met Osama – a photographer and Al Majmoua client – who is carving out a niche in her city’s male-dominated photography industry.

Lebanon has an interesting (and somewhat tragic) modern history that some say sums up the story of the Middle East in the last 60 years or so. It is a country with a strong Phoenician heritage – sea people who made great ships using their mighty cedar trees and who explored the unknown Mediterranean at a very early stage of human history. This is still reflected in the adventurous character of today’s Lebanese people. There are more Lebanese outside of the country than in Lebanon. They are known for their entrepreneurial spirit, and wherever they go they prove to be clever merchants, excellent hosts and good cooks! What a great environment for microfinance to thrive and grow.

It was incredibly enriching to participate in the assessment and to see loan officers, analysts, branch managers and all these “roles” I had been reading about for a whole year finally breathing and talking in their local environments. It felt like completing a puzzle in my head, especially because the issues we tackled were very similar to those I had read about at other microfinance institutions and in other countries.

Meeting the borrowers was also interesting. In Sidon (roughly 24 miles away from Beirut), we met Osama, an energetic woman who works as a professional photographer. Although photography is a predominately male profession in Sidon, Osama decided to take out a loan from Al Majmoua to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. It was amazing to see her carry around and switch between the very heavy cameras as she took photographs. Osama takes photos of the places and events where men cannot go, such as women-only pre-wedding parties (girls’ henna nights), where women take off their veils and everyone dances. Her success has enabled her to buy more cameras to expand her business.

In the mountains, we visited a branch in Metn, where we met some women who were just applying for their first loans (the loans are given to each individual, but there is joint liability for the group). The borrowers in the group were from different religious communities – one was actually from another country, Syria.  As I looked at the group, I thought of the 15-year civil war that had devastated Lebanon. The country has made great strides since the conflict ended in 1990, but there is still a lot to be done. Al Majmoua is well aware of this cultural context, and during our interviews with staff there was a common theme – employees felt appreciated for what they brought to the organization, regardless of their background.  This point is worth emphasizing in a country like Lebanon, which has been ravaged by sectarian conflict.

Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper questions to ask, for once I know the proper questions, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”  Grameen Foundation’s human capital management work follows a similar approach in serving client organizations. We interview staff members from all levels of the organization to identify the current state of their practices and the gaps between the current and the desired state.  Then we develop a roadmap of priorities to align those practices with the business strategy.

During our meetings with Al Majmoua’s staff, we carefully selected each question, tailoring them to each target group.  This was coupled with setting the right mood, to make the participants feel comfortable enough to share their ideas, opinions and concerns, but without influencing their answers.

My experience at Al Majmoua confirmed what I had already learned at Grameen Foundation’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. – field officers and middle managers are at the heart of the microfinance industry. Their responsibilities are physically and psychologically demanding, and they work under difficult conditions. Their success requires the best human capital-management practices from their organizations.

Meeting people who work on the front lines and behind the scenes – along with those who benefit from their service – helped to give me a new perspective on microfinance. I now have a better appreciation for all the hard work of the people working behind computer screens in D.C. who strive to end poverty and touch real lives from a distance. It is definitely worth it and, as I’ve seen first-hand, it pays off in the end.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the historic city of Istanbul for the first time, on the occasion of the first Grameen-Jameel (GJ) partners meeting, followed by a two-day meeting of GJ’s Board of Directors, on which I serve.  GJ is a joint venture launched five years ago between Grameen Foundation and the Jeddah-based Abdul Latif Jameel Group to advance microfinance and poverty reduction in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and now Turkey as well.  (Peter Bladin and Jim Greenberg are the other two Grameen Foundation representatives on the GJ Board, while Fady Jameel is one of the two Jameel Group appointees, in addition to chairman Zaher Al Munajjed.)

The partners meeting was elevated by the presence of not just representatives of 13 of the 15 GJ’s partner microfinance institutions (MFIs), but by Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus.  (The only MFIs that did not join were one from Egypt and one from Syria, the latter due to the inability to get a visa, because Turkey has closed its embassy there.)

Prof. Muhammad Yunus speaks to the crowd at the Grameen-Jameel partner meeting, held in Istanbul.

The first day of the meeting consisted of an excellent overview by its General Manager, Julia Assaad, of GJ’s accomplishments.  She announced that GJ had surpassed its goal of reaching 1 million poor families with microfinance through its partner MFIs to date, and had in fact crossed the 1.5-million mark in September.  Representatives of five of the partners – the Turkey Grameen Microcredit Program (TGMP)in Turkey, Enda Inter-Arabe in Tunisia, DBACD in Egypt, Tamweelcom in Jordan and FONDEP in Morocco – spoke about their journey of starting and growing their organizations, and how GJ was able to help them in critical ways.One of the speakers was Prof. Aziz Akgul, founder of TGMP, the largest MFI in Turkey (with more than 80 branches serving more than 55,000 families) and a key GJ partner.  Also present was Maya, the second leading MFI in Turkey and the first established there. It is one of the world’s few MFIs that not only serves 100% female clients but also has an all-female staff serving them.

But before these presentations, Prof. Yunus spoke.  He congratulated GJ and its partners on their accomplishments and detailed the track record of the Grameen family of companies, especially Grameen Bank, Grameen Shakti and some of the most successful social businesses.  There were many probing questions from the delegates, who clearly enjoyed hearing from Prof. Yunus.

In the afternoon, I led a session related to lessons learned in crisis management, drawn from Grameen Foundation’s partners around the world, especially in India and Haiti.  This was followed by formal presentations about the recent experiences of the LEAD Foundation in Egypt and Al Amal Bank in Yemen, both of which have had to manage their operations despite civil unrest and revolution.

After an open discussion period, Professor Yunus offered some concluding remarks.  He noted in particular how impressed he was by the courageous behavior of the staff of Al Amal Bank.  He warned that, based on the post-independence experience in Bangladesh, things in the “Arab Spring” countries are likely to get worse before they get better.  However, he said that new governments – regardless of ideology – ultimately figure out that they need microfinance to thrive in order to be successful, so he urged the MFIs to put aside their own political beliefs and be open to responding to overtures from whatever leadership emerges in countries now in transition.

That evening, GJ hosted a dinner at which local business leaders joined the delegates at a restaurant on the Bosporus River, where attendees heard Prof. Yunus give yet another speech. He was introduced by GJ Chairman Zaher Al Munajjed, who publicly announced the achievement of 1.5 million families reached by Grameen-Jameel through its MFI partners.

The next day, Prof. Yunus gave speeches at Okan and Sanbanci Universities.  At Okan University, he inaugurated the “Muhammad Yunus International Centre for Microfinance and Social Business.”  The event at Sanbanci University was hosted by Prof. Nakiye Advan Boyacigiller, the Dean of the School of Management, attended by the chairman of the university’s board of trustees and was arranged by Mr. Al Munajjed.  In between those speeches, Prof. Yunus returned to the closing luncheon of the partners meeting to give some words of inspiration.

The second day was spent designing a road map for the partners and GJ to maximize their poverty-fighting efforts in a region in turmoil.  Muhammad Khaled – one of the most respected microfinance consultants in the Arab World, who established and ran an MFI in Palestine, and was the co founder of the Sanabel microfinance network in the MENA region – spoke to several of us about the accomplishments of GJ over the past five years.  While he said that reaching 1.5 million families was impressive, he thought that our impact went far beyond reaching this milestone. He noted that due to GJ’s efforts, banks in Egypt had begun lending to MFIs much more aggressively and, as a result of a new standard being set, more than $150 million in additional financing had become available to MFIs in Egypt alone.  (By way of comparison, GJ’s annual budget has always been less than $3 million.)

He also emphasized the impact and influence of the Progress out of Poverty Index^® – the social performance management and accountability tool based on Grameen Bank’s “Ten Indicators of Poverty.” GJ’s work to promote its use, he said, has helped the PPI^® become the industry standard in the region and globally.

Attendees at the Grameen-Jameel partner meeting mingle during a coffee break.

In a separate conversation I learned that Enda Inter-Arabe, the leading MFI of Tunisia, took advantage of the change of government there to secure the census data needed to design a PPI for that country (the tool is country-specific), and I assured the people I was speaking with that we would start the process of designing it right away.  It is exciting to see another country where the leading MFI uses this leading tool, which was commissioned by Grameen Foundation, in collaboration with CGAP and the Ford Foundation, and now being deployed by Grameen-Jameel in the MENA region.

After lunch, the delegates visited a branch of TGMP, the leading Turkish MFI.  In the evening, they dined at a traditional Turkish restaurant and, with the assistance of a three-piece band, sang and danced for hours.  The final sub-group returned to the hotel at 2:45 a.m.!

The Arab World is an unstable place right now, but it is also full of promise and a degree of optimism for the long term that I have not sensed before.  (I have been traveling there several times a year since my first trip in January 2002.)  Grameen-Jameel – the Arab World’s first social business and Grameen Foundation’s first joint venture – is in a unique position to contribute to realizing this promise, especially after this historic meeting and the timely advice and inspiration of Prof. Yunus.