Nobel for Grameen Bank and Mohammed Yunus
Professor Mohammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank that he started in 1976 in Bangladesh have together been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006. This 1995 Atlantic article describes how it began:
One afternoon in 1976 Muhammad Yunus was taking a walk in a village a mile from Chittagong University, where he was the head of the Department of Economics, when he encountered a woman weaving bamboo stools.Today the Grameen Bank reportedly has 6.6 million borrowers, 97% per cent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh.Yunus had returned to Bangladesh in 1972, after the country had become independent. Prior to that he had spent seven years in Nashville, Tennessee, completing a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University. Yunus had been influenced by the student activism of the late 1960s, especially the civil-rights movement, and the message he carried home was that it was possible for young people to change society. As a professor of economics in Bangladesh, he asked his students if, for all their knowledge of equations and formulas, they really knew how 90 percent of the people in their country lived. He challenged them to close their textbooks and get involved with local villagers, and for four years he spent his afternoons with them in villages, studying the informal economy, organizing immunization programs, and helping local farmers to grow more food.
Yunus had never met Sufiya Khatun on his many walks through her village. Sufiya, a widow, was trying to support herself by constructing and selling bamboo stools. She earned two cents a day. When Yunus asked why her profit was so low, she explained that the only person who would lend her money to buy bamboo was the trader who bought her final product—and the price he set barely covered her costs.
Yunus’s instinct was to dig into his pocket. But first he wanted to see if there were other villagers in similar circumstances. He and a few students canvassed the village and compiled a list of forty-two people whose capital requirements, in order to buy materials and work freely, added up to about $26.00…
What a great effort for change.
Picture via.
Well deserved. It is very heartening to see that an individual has been able to make a big difference is so many people’s lives.
Comment by Nithya — October 13, 2006 @ 3:44 pm
Thanks for posting this excellent news! At Grameen Foundation, we’re working to spread the Grameen Bank microfinance model around the world. For those new to microfinance: Learn more about microfinance and our worldwide programs. For more details on the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus has published the very useful Grameen Bank at a Glance.
Comment by Ken Liffiton, Grameen Foundation — October 13, 2006 @ 5:21 pm
Given your take on the award to Yunus, you might find the Economist’s recent article Losing its Lustre as appalling as I do. The article argues that the award shouldn’t have been given at all rather than given to someone “undeserving.” Outrageous, IMHO.
Comment by Luke Gilman — October 14, 2006 @ 3:38 am
Economist can have their views as everyone are entitled to theirs, but the splendid work of Yunus deserved every bit of the notice that it received with the Nobel.
Comment by Kishore — October 14, 2006 @ 5:32 am
Some days are absolutely fine.
This was one of them.
Yes!
Glad you posted this.
Kim
Comment by Kim — October 20, 2006 @ 4:20 am
Hello to all the people who support Muhamad Yunus. You have an opportunity to learn more about his ideas and help at the same time. Ashoka: Inovators for the Public (www.ashoka.org), recently developed a group of films about Social Entrepreneurship, and Yunus is one of the speakers.
Ashoka - just launched an ambitious subtitling project with dotSUB (www.dotsub.com/nobel), a new site that lets you translate films line by line. The plan: volunteers translate one video on Muhammad Yunus and one on Ashoka founder Bill Drayton into 100 languages in time for the Nobel ceremony on December 10th. Go on, translate a few lines (www.dotsub.com/nobel) and learn more about what these Social Entrepreneurs have done. You will be giving people all around the world the opportunity to enjoy and learn from these videos…
Comment by fsosa@ashoka.org — November 14, 2006 @ 5:52 pm