Aotearoa Development Cooperative
James Carpenter is a development economist and co-founder of the Aotearoa Development Cooperative, a not-for-profit organisation working with poor communities in Myanmar (Burma) to establish community-owned microfinance institutions. James lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Find Aotearoa at www.adc.org.nz
The five of us sat round in a circle on the dusty ground, the trees above us providing some relief from the thick heat beating down from the Burmese sun. We were discussing how a country moves from the status of a developing country to one of developed, over a pot of rice and boiled carrots. All four of them were looking intently at me, waiting for an answer that would give guidance for how they might escape the grasp of extreme poverty. The conversation suddenly turned very personal. I paused for a moment . . . I was well aware that it was a moment like this that I should have a pre prepared answer for. How exactly did New Zealand, the United States and Europe manage to develop? And why have so many struggled to grow, develop and be free from subsistence living?
I have learnt that the answer to this question can be as complicated or as simple as you choose to make it. Academic answers range from looking at education shortfalls, exporting limitations, and technological breakthroughs, just to name a few. If you ask the poor in Myanmar however, the answer is far more simplistic: access to credit provides the key to opportunity. Despite this, nearly 3 billion poor people across the world lack access to basic financial instruments which are vital to manage their precarious lives.
I first came across microfinance in 2004, just before Mohammed Yunis was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his work with the Grameen bank. I had always been interested in development, spending all of my academic life on the subject. Two thoughts have guided my thinking on development: first, the existence of extreme poverty is totally unnecessary in a world characterised by such abundance. Second, our efforts to eradicate poverty have been poorly conceived and rashly implemented over the last 50 years.
In 2007, I co founded the Aotearoa (our indigenous word for New Zealand) Development Cooperative in an effort to address these two thoughts. ADC is a New Zealand-based, not-for-profit organisation working with economically underprivileged groups to establish microfinance institutions, using accountable and sustainable business models. We differ to most NGO’s because we take a cooperative approach to development, closely connecting our funders directly to their clients (ie the poor in Myanmar). We use sustainability and poverty outreach as our two guiding principles.
Why would you start up your own bank? Because the need for it is so great. Access to financial markets is something we take for granted in the developed world – yet without it, we would almost certainly stagnate. Credit provides an opportunity that the poor desperately need and deserve. M.K.Gandhi once asked of a follower, how is what you do on a daily basis helping the poorest in this world? This is a question which I think should occupy the minds of a great many people. Poverty exists only because we allow it to – and it requires an active decision and a whole lot of fight to start moving in the opposite direction. ADC aims to provide leadership in the development space for this purpose. Perhaps there will be a time when, as Mohammed Yunis says, poverty will only be remembered in museums, and the poor will not need to ask how to escape subsistence living, while wondering where the next meal will come from.
The development industry is in desperate need of decisive, innovative and impassioned leadership to move forward from a distinct lack of progress over the last 50 years. Starting my own organisation with collaboration from the private sector and enthusiastic and creative individuals has proved a fantastic way to begin the drive for this change.
Check us out at www.adc.org.nz