Wednesday the group attended a client workshop, which I envisioned as a low-key training affair with us observing quietly from the back of the room. Nothing could have been further from the truth! We were escorted to a long table on a platform at the front of the room next to the podium. In front of us were hundreds of women seated below us in endless rows of chairs. We were the honored guests of the proceeding, and were treated like royalty. We each introduced ourselves, but since most of the meeting was conducted in the local language, we members of the Grameen Foundation delegation had to listen attentively for our names to be mentioned in the stream of unintelligible speech in order to know when to get up and make our short speeches. We listened to a number of the women and heard their inspiring stories. Later, we visited the member’s craft booths set up on one side of the massive hall. I bought a few things, took a few pictures and was repeatedly asked for my autograph. The whole experience was very over the top!

After a while, we were ushered out of the hall and driven to SHARE’s headquarters to debrief our short visit. The group shared some concerns about the operation. During our visit, we had been shown SHARE’s impressive system of business controls that help to insure that the operations are conducted fairly, without any corruption or funny accounting. Each branch is audited four times a year, two of them in excruciating detail, for example. It is a massively structured system, with all control vested in the head of the organization. This works well if you have a good leader, as they currently do in Udaia. But we expressed some concerns about the weak succession plans. The operation seems to be kept together by the force of will of its head, and no real process for delegating power was evident. Still, SHARE has been remarkably successful, reaching hundreds of thousands of families and significantly improving the lives of over 75% of them while maintaining its financial sustainability - in other words making a profit. It is an incredible achievement.