Hats off to Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank!

Hats off to Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank! December 10th, 2006 by aajkibaat

Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname of “banker of the poor.”

Muhammed Yunus,aged 66, set up a bank in the 1976 to give credit to the poor in his native Bangladesh, especially women, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral.
He had a great vision and it materialised in the shape of this extremely successful chain of Grameen Banks, benefiting millions of Bangladeshi poor, especailly women.
Returning from a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, Yunus was shocked by the 1974 Bangladesh famine and headed out into the villages to see what he could do.
He found that the women were severely in debt to the conventional moneylenders.
Yunus’s initial aim was simply to persuade a local bank manager to step in and offer the villagers regular credit without a guarantee. The banker said it was impossible without a guarantee.
Yunus set out to prove him wrong and has never looked back. Grameen - meaning ‘village’ in Bengali - has now disbursed $5.72 billion since its inception. Of this $5.07 billion has been repaid - a loan recovery rate of 98.85 per cent.
“Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,” the secretive five-member Nobel committee said in announcing the award.
Oslo - Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Movement micro-banking system in his native Bangladesh, on Sunday received the Nobel Peace Prize he shared along with the non-profit Grameen Bank.
The award was worth 10 million kronor (1.37 million dollars), and includes a gold medal and diploma. Board member Mosammat Taslima Begum represented Grameen Bank, which means ‘rural bank’ in Bengali, at the award ceremony in Oslo City Hall.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Ole Mjos said Yunus, 66, and Grameen Bank were awarded ‘for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.’
In his speech, Mjos said the Nobel committee’s choice also aimed at bridging ‘the gap between the West and Islam’ underlining how the West had ‘learned from Yunus, from Bangladesh, and from the Muslim part of the world.’
He also underlined that ‘the struggle against poverty is work for peace of the first order.’
Mjos recalled how Yunus 1976 made his first loan of 27 dollars out of his own pocket to 42 craftsmen in a little village in Bangladesh, saying they could pay it back when they could afford to.
The loan inspired what evolved into Grameen Bank, Mjos said, noting that now ‘the bank has almost 7 million borrowers. Grameen Bank lends 800 million dollars per year, in loans averaging just over 100 dollars. The bank is self-financing and makes a profit.’
The concept has spread to some 100 countries, and Grameen Bank has spun off into other areas including joint venture Grameen Phone.
In his acceptance speech, Yunus who was accompanied to Oslo by nine women who have borrowed from the bank, said ‘poverty is a threat to peace,’ noting that ‘half of the world population lives on 2 dollars a day. Over 1 billion people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.’
Yunus added that the goal set by the United Nations in 2000 to halve global poverty by 2015 was derailed by the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US and the Iraq war when focus was shifted from a war on poverty to a war against terrorism.
‘Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest language,’ Yunus said, adding ‘we must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.’
Yunus envisaged the future development of what he called ’social businesses’ that would offer healthcare, financial services, information technology, education and training for the poor.
Among the guests at the ceremony were Norwegian King Harald V, Queen Sonja, Crown Prince Haakon, Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Queen Sofia of Spain as well as Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen.
The Peace Prize is one of the awards endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. In accordance with Nobel’s will, the peace prize is handed out in Oslo.

Well done to him, but yeh kaafi poorani khabar hai