Micro credit - giving small loans to the poor without collateral. The world seems to have embraced it as the means to end poverty. Conventional banks claim they offer micro credit and the UN even proclaimed 2005 the year of micro credit. But is it really the solution to poverty?

In 1995 MovieTron produced the documentary Signature of Change, the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which showed the mechanisms of micro credit through portraits of Bengali women. This 46-minute documentary was broadcast worldwide.

Ten years later we are back in Bangladesh for the shooting of Small Change, Big Business. We revisit the main characters of the 1995 documentary and examine the effects micro credit has had on their lives.

In 1995 Aysha and Momena were successful borrowers from the Grameen Bank, are they still in business? And what has happened to Nurjahan? The chiefs of her village did not allow her to accept a loan. 

Naju took her first loan from the Grameen Bank only seven years ago. With her husband she started a rope factory, which employs 25 people. They are wealthy now and Naju proudly shows us her house with television and refrigerator.

Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor, established the Grameen bank in 1984. He is viewed internationally as the inventor of micro credit. His goal is to abolish poverty from the face of the earth. He dreams of opening a poverty museum in 2030 so that everybody can see what poverty used to be like.

© 2005 MovieTron & NMO