Support Bengali Translation of Small Loans, Big Dreams

I am hoping that you will consider making a donation, of any size that is comfortable for you, to allow for the translation of my book "Small Loans, Big Dreams: Grameen Bank and the Microfinance Revolution in Bangladesh, America and Beyond" into Bengali. That will make it accessible for the first time to Bangladeshis and others who read Bengali but not English. It will allow many to learn about one of Bangladesh's great contributions to the world.

Let me provide a bit of background. In my college years I became fascinated by the Grameen Bank and its founder, the future Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. I spent my 20s immersing myself in their work to empower the poor women of Bangladesh and beyond with tiny loans to start or expand small businesses. That immersion required me to live in Bangladesh for six years (including many months in remote rural areas) and to learn to speak Bengali well.

That decade culminated in the publication of "Small Loans" by Random House in 1996 (though under a different title). From there, I went on to start and run Grameen Foundation for 18 years.

My book uses the creative nonfiction style to tell the story of how a group of Bangladeshi women benefitted from Grameen loans (based on my living in their village for many months in 1993-4), how a group of African-American women in Chicago were helped by a program there modeled on Grameen, and of how Muhammad Yunus made it all possible for millions of people. The part of my book about Yunus is the closest thing there currently is to a proper biography of him. The stories of the women borrowers include examples of inspirational progress and ones recounting much more modest improvements.

I updated the English-language version of the book in 2008, 2022, and 2024, and an affordable English-language Bangladeshi version came out in January 2025. The new editions explain what happened since the 1990s for the women borrowers and for Yunus, and in particular detail how Grameen America has built on the early successes in U.S. Grameen-style micro-lending to the point where it now disburses $1 billion in microloans in America per year, with 99% repayment.

These latest editions also cover the student-led uprising that toppled the autocratic regime and brought Muhammad Yunus to power as the Interim Prime Minister in August 2024. I believe that supporting Professor Yunus, as this book does, while he is leading the world's 8th most populous country in exciting new directors is especially important.

I am proud that my book has gotten some great reviews over the years. For example, Publisher's Weekly BookLife made it an "Editor's Pick " (only given to the top 5% of all books they review) and wrote, "With a storyteller’s eye for the affecting detail, Counts' … clear-eyed, practical-minded accounts are affecting…. The case studies here never shy away from the harshness of life or the setbacks loan recipients can face, though they (and the copious new data and research Counts presents) remain persuasive: microfinance changes lives."

I believe it is important that the people of Bangladesh have the opportunity to deeply understand the story of one of their nation's greatest contributions to the world. Only a small percentage of its citizens know English well enough to read "Small Loans" in its current form. But with recent progress in increasing literacy rates, which Grameen helped make possible, most of them read Bengali well.

My local publisher University Press Limited is committed to translating it into Bengali and publishing it in time for a major conference there in late June 2025 that I will attend. But the economics of translating and publishing this version are daunting. Getting external funding for the translation costs, estimated to be $3,000-$4,000, is essential for bringing this book to market. Funding it myself became impossible when a member of my family recently lost her job.

I don't expect to earn much of anything from this version via royalties, and I will donate whatever I do earn to nonprofits and social businesses serving Bangladesh. If more than the cost of the translation is raised, I will use the additional amount to market the book in Bangladesh.

For those who donate $75 or more, I will send a signed version of whichever book you desire (the U.S. English version, the Bangladeshi English version, or the new Bengali version) or a signed version of one of my other two books ("Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind " or "When in Doubt , Ask for More"). Contributions are not tax-deductible. All who donate will be mentioned in the acknowledgements section of the book, and on my blog.

Please consider helping me make this dream come true.