Muhammad Yunus

Nobel Prize. Founder and Managing Director, Grameen Bank

Muhammad Yunus speaker, grameen bank
English

Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Movement, is responsible for many innovative programs benefiting the rural poor. He attended Vanderbilt University on a Fulbright Scholarship and received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1969. He taught briefly in the US before returning to Bangladesh, where he joined the Economics Department at Chittagong University. As a result of the successful implementation of his ideas and the expanding scope of this model  he won the Nobel Prize in 2006.

In 1974, Muhammad Yunus pioneered the idea of Gram Sarker (village government) as a form of local government based on the participation of rural people. This concept proved successful and was adopted by the Bangladeshi government in 1980. In 1978, Muhammad Yunus received the President′s award for Tebhaga Khamar (a system of cooperative three-share farming, which the Bangladeshi government adopted as the Packaged Input Program in 1977). Muhammad Yunus is also noted for the creation of “micro-credit,” which provides “micro” loans to the poor and serves as a catalyst for improving their socio-economic conditions.

The UN Secretary-General appointed Professor Muhammad Yunus to the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing from 1993 to 1995. Muhammad Yunus has also served on the Global Commission of Women′s Health (1993-1995), the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development (1993-present), and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance. Professor Muhammad Yunus has received numerous international awards for his work, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award from Manila, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture from Geneva, the Mohamed Shabdeen Award for Science from Sri Lanka, and the World Food Prize from the United States. Within Bangladesh, he has received the President′s Award, the Central Bank Award, and the Independence Day Award, the nation′s highest honour.

Muhammad Yunus is now highly sought after as a speaker at leading conferences around the globe.  A highly charismatic figure with a wealth of experience and an uncanny ability to help thousands of people to decide their own destiny.

Banker To the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty- 2008

n 1983, Muhammad Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with minuscule loans. Twenty-three years later they won the Nobel Prize for Peace for their work in eradicating poverty. This is an inspiring story of one man’s realization that access to even a small amount of credit can transform the lives of the poorest citizens of the world.

Yunus aimed to help the poor by supporting the spark of personal initiative and enterprise by which they could lift themselves out of poverty forever. It was an idea born on a day in 1976 when he loaned $27 from his own pocket to forty-two people living in a tiny village. These micro-entrepreneurs only needed enough credit to purchase the raw materials for their trade. Yunus’s small loan helped them break the cycle of poverty for good. His solution to world poverty, founded on the belief that credit is a fundamental human right, is brilliantly simple: lend poor people money on terms that are suitable to them, teach them a few sound financial principles, and they will help themselves.

Yunus’s theories work. Grameen Bank has provided loans totaling six billion dollars to seven million families in rural Bangladesh. Today, more than 250 institutions in nearly 100 countries operate micro-credit programs based on the Grameen methodology, placing Grameen at the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through micro-lending.

Banker To the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty- 2008

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism- 2008

In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe. But traditional capitalism has been unable to solve problems like inequality and poverty. In Muhammad Yunus' groundbreaking sequel to Banker to the Poor, he outlines the concept of social business--business where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet. Creating a World Without Poverty reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already underway.

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism- 2008

Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs-2010)

Muhammad Yunus, the practical visionary who pioneered microcredit and, with his Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, has developed a new dimension for capitalism which he calls "social business." The social business model has been adopted by corporations, entrepreneurs, and social activists across the globe. Its goal is to create self-supporting, viable commercial enterprises that generate economic growth as they produce goods and services to fulfill human needs. In Building Social Business, Yunus shows how social business can be put into practice and explains why it holds the potential to redeem the failed promise of free-market enterprise.

Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs-2010)