Positive Ecology
The transformation to sustainability and/as ways to happiness
What seems to be heard most often are the environmentalists predicting doom, and the deniers and delayers arguing that change would hurt us, personally and economically.Recently, we see an emergent understanding that a transformation to sustainability is actually not just about hard choices for "saving the planet," but about ways in which human happiness can ...learn more
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Created: Nov 23, 2007
Updated: Oct 25, 2009
Membership: Open
Semi-Private
Muhammad Yunus
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| Muhammad Yunus was born in 28th June, 1940 in the village of Bathua, in Hathazari, Chittagong, the business centre of what was then Eastern Bengal. He was the third of 14 children of whom five died in infancy. His father was a successful goldsmith who always encouraged his sons to seek higher education. But his biggest influence was his mother, Sufia Khatun, who always helped any poor that knocked on their door. This inspired him to commit himself to eradication of poverty. His early childhood years were spent in the village. In 1947, his family moved to the city of Chittagong, where his father had the jewelery business. | | |
 | For more information go to www.muhammadyunus.org | |
| In 1974, Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist from Chittagong University, led his students on a field trip to a poor village. They interviewed a woman who made bamboo stools, and learnt that she had to borrow the equivalent of 15p to buy raw bamboo for each stool made. After repaying the middleman, sometimes at rates as high as 10% a week, she was left with a penny profit margin. Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level. Realizing that there must be something terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his own hands, and from his own pocket lent the equivalent of ? 17 to 42 basket-weavers. He found that it was possible with this tiny amount not only to help them survive, but also to create the spark of personal initiative and enterprise necessary to pull themselves out of poverty. Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out 'micro-loans', and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning 'village bank' founded on principles of trust and solidarity. In Bangladesh today, Grameen has 1,084 branches, with 12,500 staff serving 2.1 million borrowers in 37,000 villages. On any working day Grameen collects an average of $1.5 million in weekly installments. Of the borrowers, 94% are women and over 98% of the loans are paid back, a recovery rate higher than any other banking system. Grameen methods are applied in projects in 58 countries, including the US, Canada, France, The Netherlands and Norway. | ||
Muhammad Yunus on WiserEarth
Muhammad Yunus' 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World PovertyOther WiserEarth Links
- Cloning Grameen Bank: Replicating a poverty reduction model in India, Nepal and Vietnam
- Give Us Credit: How Muhammad Yunus' Microlending Revolution is Empowering Women from Bangladesh to Chicago
- Grameen, Grameen Foundation, Grameen Technology Center,
- The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank
