Tsunami Assistance-New Model for Development

TSUNAMI ASSISTANCE--NEW MODEL FOR DEVELOPMENT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, pursuant to that consent, I would like to be recognized to speak to an issue which the whole world has focused on over the last several weeks and months. Within a few weeks, the Senate is likely to vote to send hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the nations that were devastated by the tsunami on December 26. We have seen the videotapes. We cannot forget them. Within a matter of minutes on that terrible day, whole families and villages were swept to sea. Schools, clinics, and hospitals were destroyed. Coastal cities were eliminated. What infrastructure there was in place was wiped out.

We are doing the right thing to come to the assistance of the victims of this disaster, one of the 10 most devastating natural disasters in recent history, but we should not overlook the fact there are many other challenges in this world. Millions have died in the Congo and the Sudan. Hundreds of thousands are still at risk. Preventable, treatable diseases kill millions more every year. Someone dies of AIDS every 10 seconds in this world. Someone new is infected every 6 seconds. Poverty kills. Bad water, hunger, poor sanitation kills; they are the weapons of economic injustice and economic disparity.

Nelson Mandela said recently:

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

Overcoming poverty is not just a gesture of charity; it is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. Our attention now focuses on the Indian Ocean, as it should. But let's not overlook the suffering in the world.

A number of years ago I went to Bangladesh. I went there to look at food programs. In the course of my visit, I met one of the most extraordinary people I ever had the pleasure to meet. His name was Muhammad Yunus. Muhammad Yunus, not that long ago in 1976, was an economics professor. Having taken a few economic courses--I remembered my professors--he would have blended in with the faculty of most universities.

He had an idea. It was an idea that was borne out of human experience. It involves basic economics. Dr. Yunus thought for a moment, what if we gave the poorest people on Earth a small sum of money, what would they do with it? Would they pay it back? They were two very basic questions. The issue came up because he saw in many of the poorest villages of Bangladesh people who were being exploited by those who would lend them money and charge them outrageous interest rates. He started something called Grameen Bank, which means the people's bank in their local language in 1976. The concept behind it was to give a very small loan to people who were very poor.

Now, 29 years later, as I stand in the Senate, Dr. Yunus's theory of microcredit and the Grameen Bank grew from a class project to a world-wide phenomenon. Today, there are 80 million families in the world who are benefiting from Dr. Yunus's concept of microcredit. We estimate some 400 million people will benefit; 98 percent of them are women.

These are people who are part of a quiet revolution. I have seen it firsthand. Their lives have been transformed. They have enough money to feed their children, to buy basic tools, maybe to buy a goat for milk, perhaps to buy a sewing machine--basic things that transform their lives.

They pay the money back. They pay it back so others in the village can borrow money, as well. The average loan for many of Dr. Yunus's clients in Bangladesh is $9. With $9, many people go from being a beggar to a businessperson. He actually decided that because Bangladesh did not have a telephone system that he would buy cell phones and he would loan money to people so they could purchase them. Go to the remote villages and there sit 10 women holding a cell phone. With these cell phones, they go to their villages, they sell them minutes on the phone, and they make a living. They are the Grameen Telephone Company, the telephone women who borrowed enough money to buy a cell phone and now make a living with that cell phone. Incidentally, they charge their cell phones with a solar-powered generator. They are thinking ahead. This type of thing is happening all over the world.

The reason I raise it is because when Dr. Yunus came to see me 2 weeks ago here in Washington we talked about the tsunami. He said there is so much that needs to be done there. They need to rebuild communities. They need to rebuild lives, but do not overlook the fact that the ocean, as it came in, swept away the schools and the teachers with it. Now the surviving children who are there are in camps trying to survive instead of thinking about thriving, going to school and giving back.

Dr. Yunus said to me, this man who comes up with amazing, simple ideas: Senator, why don't we create a tsunami scholars program? Why aren't we focusing on these children and their education? It is so simple and so obvious: To rebuild the schools, to bring in trained teachers so these kids have a chance but to take it a step beyond. What if we said across this world that we would challenge all colleges and universities to take two students from the tsunami area, students who would qualify to come to school, but to give these kids a chance at an education so they could go home and rebuild those villages and rebuild those nations?

Another challenge from Dr. Yunus, very basic, from a man who understands poverty at the most basic level. We are working on that now. We think we can put together a proposal that the United States can help to lead the world into considering.

The devastation of the tsunami took only a few minutes. It will take years to overcome. If we do the right things, we can rebuild those societies in the right way. The people living there are going to know a lot about us in the process. They will know that some of what they have been told about the United States is not true. Some who want them to be terrorists and to hate the United States will have a hard time explaining how the United States came to the assistance of these poor people after the tsunami and how we stood by them and their children in their education afterwards.

It is a small thing. It is important. It helps explain who we are. Tsunami scholarships are one example of how we can make certain we do not abandon the victims of this disaster after the headlines are gone. It is important we show this to the world, especially to the Muslim world, of what the American character is made.

I want to give these children of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and elsewhere a chance at an education that will not only transform their lives but allow them to go back and transform their countries.

The poet, Lord Byron, advised: Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life.

The peoples of the Indian Ocean have seem the storms. Let us be the rainbow that follows. Education is the most valuable tool you can put in the hands of anyone, particularly a child. As the children of the tsunami grow, let's make sure their opportunities for education are not constrained by misfortune or geography.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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