<p>David: I am humbled and proud of you.</p>
<p>I didn’t know you have a kid at Princeton.</p>
<p>Graduate student - joint Ph.D. in Musicology/Italian Renaissance Studies.</p>
<p>Wow!! Congratulations!</p>
<p>Somehow I missed this thread until just now. </p>
<p>Belatedly (and at the risk of repeating some previous responses), I have just one word - one syllable - to offer:</p>
<p>WOW!!!</p>
<p>Just stumbling across this thread now — WOWWEEEEEE and YIPPPPEEEEEEEE - </p>
<p>(not to boast, but two syllables each)</p>
<p>mini – I cut and pasted the address for your blog and I don’t think it’s the correct link. Is there more to the address?</p>
<p><a href=“not%20to%20boast,%20but%20two%20syllables%20each”>quote</a>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yo-- </p>
<p>Especially these days, small is [color=purple]beautiful<a href=“to%20steal%20from%20my%20betters”>/color</a>, so, uh, if you can express yourself in even fewer letters (since fewer syllables seems an impossibility), well, OK, then you’ll have something to crow about. . . .</p>
<p>[Small</a> Is Beautiful - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful]Small”>Small Is Beautiful - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>“Small is beautiful.” But what’s up with all those exclamation marks? 
“Less is more.”</p>
<p>What wonderful work by your mother, mini. I often think about that culture and others w/so many suffering people and wonder–what specifically can be done that will change things? It’s a hard question—but your mom, your organization and you are making a difference. That’s fantastic!</p>
<p>“I cut and pasted the address for your blog and I don’t think it’s the correct link. Is there more to the address?”</p>
<p>shantinik.blogspot.com</p>
<p>Fascinating; thanks for sharing. Mother Theresa was my idol since I was in middle school. Great work, and so needed.</p>
<p>mini:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Congratulations again to Amma, Appa and you!</p></li>
<li><p>Could you share your opinion of the Grameen bank and foundation?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>mini, a very heartfelt congratulations. </p>
<p>I’m also glad you and Ellen’s two health problems seem to be still at bay. that’s great - the world needs needs people like you, and the other Friends of the Dalit (or just Friends).</p>
<p>Haven’t you heard - ‘less’ is the new ‘more’?</p>
<p>mini,
Heartiest congratulations to your and your extended family for all you have done and will do to light up the world.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your good wishes.</p>
<p>Muhammed Yusef has done a spectacularly good job organizing microcredit schemes with Grameen. Oddly enough, he wasn’t really the “inventor”, Third World microcredit having been established in rural Brazil several years earlier. But he is the chief popularizer, and it has been a terrific approach, especially in areas and countries where banks are not well-developed.</p>
<p>With LAFTI, we have decided not to develop separate microfinance institutions. Dalits (so-called “untouchables”) have long been shut out of mainstream institutions, and our goal, given that the Indian banking industry is so highly developed, is to help them gain access, especially since for decades they never would have even set foot inside (and, where we are, the women are 90% illiterate. So, it our goat scheme, for example, women save up 200 rupees, deposit them in a regular bank savings account, and then borrow 800 rupees from the bank in order to purchase a goat. (LAFTI provides surety for the loan - that’s where you come in, friends - [Friends</a> of LAFTI Foundation](<a href=“http://www.friendsoflafti.org%5DFriends”>http://www.friendsoflafti.org) ) The loan is usually paid off through sale of one of the offspring. The result is that we can provide goats at less than 1/5th the cost of a Heifer Project sponsorship, especially as we have no overhead. And, meanwhile, the women have entered a social/economic space that would have been denied them only a generation ago.</p>
<p>The point is that Grameen is great, and it has a place, but there are other mechanisms to achieve similar, but multiple ends.</p>
<p>As an aside:</p>
<p>Mini’s last post, with its references to microfinance, made me think of this New Yorker article from a while back, which might be of interest to others wanting to read more about this area:</p>
<p>[A</a> Reporter at Large: Millions for Millions: The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/30/061030fa_fact1]A”>Millions for Millions | The New Yorker)</p>
<p>Wow, David/Mini! It’s amazing what can be accomplished when everything is possible. Your Indian parents are such inspiring people! Have a great time together in Sweden! It should be fascinating! Thanks for sharing all of this with all of us.</p>
<p>mini: Thanks for the reply. Makes sense. I will become a friend of LAFTI before Dec 31st.</p>
<p>Thanks. We can do so much with so very little.</p>
<p>A personal project of mine is to provide biosand water filters with every one of the homes we build.</p>
<p>[CAWST</a> » Filtration](<a href=“http://www.cawst.org/index.php?id=128#BSF]CAWST”>http://www.cawst.org/index.php?id=128#BSF)</p>
<p>Once we have the molds (cost $650 each), we can produce one filter a day for a cost of $12 in materials. We hope to set it as a little business for unemployed youth. (We’ve done the same in Kenya, and are soon to do so with another project in Burundi.) Almost 90% of the families we work with are beset intermittently with dysentery and other waterborne infections, and we have been able to demonstrate we can eliminate about 95% of them. Needles to say, the government is never going to provide clean water, so we’ll have to do it ourselves.</p>
<p>I am hoping to have all the projects I am working with up and running on my website soon - [Skylark</a> Sings ~ Good Works](<a href=“http://test.firenebula.com/goodworks/]Skylark”>http://test.firenebula.com/goodworks/) - though none is as dear to my heart as my mother’s work.</p>