NEW YORK, NY April 01, 2008 —

It might surprise some people that a bank from a developing country would open a branch in New York City.

Many people first learned about Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank when the bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Late last year, Grameen America opened its doors in Queens and the lender has already made loans to more than 100 women. WNYC's Ilya Marritz has more.

Banker Alethia Mendez is 24 years old, and wears a baby phat jacket with a furry hood.

MENDEZ: I know that everybody does not have all Saturday to be here and I don’t either. So I would like to start the collection.

REPORTER: “The collection” is the money that these women put into little green booklets and pass forward to Alethia. Unlike lenders that bill their borrowers monthly, Grameen America asks for weekly repayments in cash. Alethia counts the bills and puts them in a Ziploc bag in her purse.

MENDEZ: So basically for a thousand dollar loan, which is a good amt of money, you’d be repaying back 22 dollars a week…

REPORTER: The starting interest rate is 15% - not so bad for a no-money-down loan if you have few assets, and no credit. The weekly payment stays the same, so the interest rate actually drops a little each week, until it’s just seven and a half percent.

BROWN: I’m Wendy Brown actually, I heard about Grameen through Alethia, I also have a professional cleaning service.

REPORTER: What really sets Grameen apart is its basic approach. Most banking is depersonalized. It’s done electronically or through touch-tone-dialing. Grameen relies on meetings like this one.

PERICLES, PRENTICE: Miriam Pericles, I have a computer consulting business and I’m looking to expand further as part of this opportunity here…Hi, my name is Therese Prentice. My mission in life is to teach the minds of women the power of creating their own destiny so having all these women here, being able to connect with them, network, it’s like the big mastermind and I’m excited to be a part of it.

[clapping]

REPORTER: The ladies in this group call themselves the Kingdom Warriors; Many of them are members of the same church, Humble Heart Ministries.

The meeting proceeds with all the mirth and chitchat of a church bake sale.

Miriam Pericles, who took out three thousand dollars for her IT consulting business called me a few days later. She said she’d busted her credit score on a bad real estate deal, so the collateral she offers Grameen America is time:

PERICLES: To be every single Saturday at 9:30 at somebody’s house, so you can pay your loan, it’s a big thing, those are like lifestyle demands that they’re putting on you.

REPORTER: Those lifestyle demands – punctuality, reliability, opening a bank account – can do as much to prop up a one-woman enterprise as the loan itself.

Grameen America looks for borrowers are all around or below poverty level. Most of their clients meet in Spanish- or Hindi- or Bengali-speaking groups.

But you don’t have to be poor or an immigrant to get involved in unconventional banking.

MODELL: I figured that if this exists in other parts of the world certainly someone has gotta come up with an idea to do a microlending concept here in the United States.

REPORTER: They have. And instead of meeting in living rooms, you can join an online community of borrowers. Harlem graphic designer Daniel Modell got set up with a $2,000 loan days after creating a personal profile on the social finance site Zopa.com.

MODELL: I basically just said a little about my situation: I live in New York City, I have a son, and my wife and son had some emergency room expenses so to get me through this brief rough patch I was looking for a small loan to help pay down some of the credit card bills.

REPORTER: The initial loan came from a credit union. Then an anonymous “helper” called Da Playah pitched in by buying a certificate of deposit. That lowered Modell’s monthly payments from forty five dollars to forty.

If he can get more investors interested in his profile, his payments will drop again. Now he’s tricked out his profile with pictures of his infant son, and an endorsement of Barack Obama.

And what about Miriam Pericles? Would she go back to Grameen America for another loan?

PREICLES: [laughter] You better believe it!

REPORTER: In some small measure, Grameen’s success or failure in America hangs on Miriam Periclesm and the Kingdom Warriots. If they’ve repaid their loans at the end of this year, they’ll show that a banking system imported from rural Bangladesh, can activate the entrepreneurial spirit in New York’s working poor.

BROWN: I really kind of believe in Mr. Yunus' dream, where you know what? The Bible says he that lends to the poor really lends to the lord. I know, like, shortly, ‘cause I believe, I have a lot of faith, that I’m gonna be like, I don’t even say zillionaire. Not trillionaire, zillionaire, if there’s such a thing.

REPORTER: Borrower Wendy Brown, and her crew are feeling that spirit.

For WNYC, I’m Ilya Marritz.