Pennies a Day Discussion Questions Thursday 12/22

Cut and paste the following questions with the answers onto a word doc. 

1. Why is this video called Pennies a Day?

2. What does this video tell us about people’s potential to solve problems?

3. What is microlending? How does microlending offer Bangladeshi women economic and personal choices they didn’t have before? What was missing?

4. Why was there resistance to giving loans to women? Did that surprise you? If so, why?

5. According to Muhammad Yunus, women have a longer vision. Explain.

6. How did financial success change the role of women in families? How were the villages affected?

7. In the music video, The Green Children singer uses the lyrics “the power of choice.” What does she mean?

8. Why are initial loans always for income-producing projects?

9. Why was there initial opposition to Grameen in this mostly-Muslim country?

10. How does the Grameen system manage such a high payback rate on its loans in spite of requiring no collateral and no legal contract?

11. What did Muhammad Yunus mean when he said it is creativity, not the loan, that matters?

12. What obstacles made it hard for the villagers to escape poverty before Grameen Bank? What were their options?

13. Would microcredit work in America? Is it needed in America?

14. Why do people in the U.S. (even poor people) seem to have a greater range of choices than people in Bangladesh?

15. Why do you think Professor Yunus concludes it is better to give women loans instead of aid (money)?

16. In Bangladesh, most women have choices made for them by their fathers, their husbands and their governments. Does it make a difference whether you can make choices for yourself, or someone else makes them? Why?

17. Minara said, “In our village, poverty is gone.” Does this statement surprise you? Is the village still poor by our standards? Is poverty relative?