Below is a brief outline of VMPL, which is currently in the conceptual stage. This venture would be operated by a for-profit subsidiary of Polder.

Village Media Player Librarian (VMPL)

Another keystone of Polder is an initiative named the Village Media Player Librarian (VMPL). This entrepreneurial business is similar to the internationally-acclaimed Village Phone Program (VPP), which provides telecommunications services in rural areas all over Bangladesh.

As of 2006, there were over 260,000 Village Phone operators in 50,000 villages. Launched in 1997, the VPP is a unique initiative to provide telecommunications facilities in remote, rural areas where no such service was available before. It has brought about a quiet revolution in mobile telephony in Bangladesh, by putting cell phones in the hands of the rural poor, many of whom had never seen a telephone before.

The Village Phones work as owner-operated pay phones. The program has created a good income-earning opportunity for the VPP operators. Most of the VPP operators are poor women who are borrower members of Grameen Bank, a microcredit organization which extends small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.

Village Media Player Librarian (VMPL) is a franchise business system that allows the rural poor to gain access to portable media players (PMPs) loaded with specific educational content to meet their needs. It is designed to improve the health, education and employment opportunities for people who are far away from the Internet. VMPL replication manuals help nascent entrepreneurs in rural poor communities to provide a new service and earn an income. Village Media Player Librarians help educate their neighbors. They are the stewards who travel to the closest Internet access location and refill the PMPs. The VMPLs offer their service to teachers, agricultural advisors, health care workers and NGO field staff.

Polder will carefully design and attentively execute the creation of a unique brand and formula for VMPL franchises. VMPL franchises will expand rapidly across countries and continents, and earn meaningful profits commensurate with their contribution to their community and society. Polder will offer VMPL franchisees excellent training, mentoring and ongoing support. Polder will then leverage the franchisees to build a distribution network.

Access to highly-specific education and training expands the choices of the impoverished and empowers them, so that the risks they face are reduced.