July 2010

Oulu, Finland

Silver Lining Creation has released its latest documentary Micro Dreams(2010) at a music and media festival called Oulu187 Festival organized at Oulu Finland.  The festival is famous for different rock, metal, raggeie and alternative musical flavors from different parts of the world. 

Silcreation's executive director Manoj Bhusal, Head of Development and International Cooperation unit Lawin Khalil Mustafa and Coordinator for Humanitarian assistance and Human Rights Promotion Saila Ohranen joinlty released the documentary demonstrating its DVD covers. The documentary is based on the internationaly acclaimed approach of poverty alleviation -Microfinance and portrays the experiences of poor in one of the poorest regions on the planet. A short introduction of the documentary is given below. 

During the 1970s, a peculiar approach to dealing with poverty startedfrom rural Bangladesh and within a few decades, crossing borders andfrontiers, reached myriad nooks and corners of the globe. Termed bymany just as 'old wine in a new bottle', that fascinating and widelyacclaimed approach is commonly known as microfinance.

Bangladeshis considered as the birthplace of modern microfinance which startednearly four decades ago with the inception of the Grameen Bank.Microfinance in general got unprecedented international coverage andsheer admiration when its founder Mohammad Yunus was awarded the Novel peace prize in 2006. 

The UN declared the year 2005 as the 'yearof microfinance' encouraging similar initiatives in other parts of theglobe. Today, the industry reportedly serves more than 30 million poorpeople only in Bangladesh employing nearly two hundred thousand workers.However, microfinance has often been criticized as a capitalistinvention for trapping and exploiting the poor, accelerating dependencyand keep distracting the working class off the way to ultimateemancipation and a radical social transformation.

In autumn2009, a young Nepalese filmmaker extensively travelled dozens northernBangladeshi villages meeting hundreds of microfinance service users andobserving the alleged change brought about by the system. Thedocumentary, Micro Dreams (2010), features the crux of his findings andposes some crucial questions to microfinance practitioners, developmentagencies and governments across the globe as to whether microfinanceshould continued to be taken as a virtual panacea for economicdevelopment and social empowerment of the poor.