Micro-enterprise development offers yet another example. Credit and loans within reach of the poor. This bank makes more loans than the entire banking sector in Bolivia put together. Well, in the United States there are two hundred micro-enterprise programs just getting started, and this is a technique that a lot of folks believe can help. The underlying solution we see from these examples is cooperation.
Development comes from communities and individuals working together.
That's a natural outcome of empowerment. The community activists in this room know all too well that the problems on the table are severe and require considerable personal responsibility but they also know that they are made much worse by hopelessness. The mother who doesn't get prenatal care, who doesn't know about nutrition or doesn't know when to have her children immunized, her situation is made worse by a feeling of powerlessness. The young man who wants honest work but lacks the means to start a business, his situation is made worse by a lack of hope. We can't develop people or make them assume responsibility for their own lives if they don't want to.