One of the Most Deserving Nobel Peace Prizes ever...a banker?

Again, a post I entered as a guest commentator for an RW blog:
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Mohammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and creator of micro-credit in the 1980s, has been recognized for his contribution to third world stability (and upward mobility) by the 2007 Nobel Committee.

Yunus began these efforts in his native Bangladesh, and has had remarkable success lending extremely small amounts (like $20) to those wanting to make a better life for themselves, but were unable to get on the first rung of the ladder. His loans are largely to women, and the repayment rate is very nearly 100 percent.

From Voice of America News:

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In his prepared remarks accepting the award, he described the achievements of the small loans his bank offers, which have been replicated in developing countries around the world.
"Today, Grameen Bank gives loans to nearly seven million poor people, 97 percent of them are women, in 73,000 villages in Bangladesh," said Mohammed Yunus. "Grameen Bank gives collateral-free income-generating loans, housing loans, student loans and micro-enterprise loans to the poor families, and offers a host of attractive savings, pension funds and insurance products for its members."

Among those benefitting from a Grameen credit was Mosammat Taslima Begum, a Bangladeshi woman who used her first loan in 1992 to buy a goat. Now a successful, small entrepreneur, Begum was also in Norway to accept the Nobel on behalf of the bank's millions of borrowers.

But Yunus said the loans were only part of the goal.

"We are creating a completely new generation that will be well equipped to take their families out of the reach of poverty," he said. "We want to make a break with the historical continuation of poverty."

Yunus also warned, poverty generates hostility and anger, and that peace is impossible where poverty exists.
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I could not agree more. "Teach a person to fish..." is all well and good, but if he can't afford a 50-cent hook he's not going to get very far.

A sense of hope provides the motivation to better one's circumstances. But hope alone is not enough - the tools to accomplish that betterment are critical to breaking the cycle of poverty and desperation that drives third world political instability and populates terrorist groups.

And, I note that this was a private initiative, not a bloated government program, so the RW's out there should be as gratified as I am.

I remember feeling like I finally "got it" regarding life in India when I read a story about a woman who earned enough money to feed her children, but not enough to send them to school. "If I could just earn 45-cents a day I could send by children to school," she said.

45-cents a day
45-cents a day
45-cents a day
45-cents a day and she could send he children to school

:(

I think you mean lift. LOL

Life-ing each other up sounds a little sexier than I intended...

:blush:

Reminds me of the part in "Price of Loyalty' where Paul O'Neill says that if many Africans just had access to clean, reliable water, their road to prosperity would be a lot more open - a lot less dysentery, cholera and other water-borne diseases.

All it would take would be some wells drilled to adequate depths and taps attached - no purification plants or distribution pipelines needed. Very inexpensive fix, but more than they can afford.

It works.

And it worked!!

almost 100% - you'd never get that from men.

Check out www.prosper.com if you get a free moment.

Folks pool their resources to make loans to other folks -- the borrowers pay less interest than they would to a bank, and the lenders make more interest than they would get from a bank or even an average mutual fund.

discussing his micro-lending breakthrough back in July. It's a great novel take on how Bengali families have been lending amongst themselves for years, with no interest of course. In fact, it's how I started my business, micro loans from my family, myself, and friends.

hear that Grameen is just a new take on a Bengali tradition. I find it comforting that there really is nothing new under the sun. Human nature hasn't changed. We know everything we need to know to make the world a wonderful place - we just need to take action.

:hi:

The idea was so simple no one had thought of it. Yunus is a terrific example of one guy changing the world.

Muhammad Yunus, left, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Mosammat Taslima Begum, representing Mr. Yunus’s Grameen Bank, arriving for the award ceremony at Oslo Town Hall today. (Pool photo by Bjoern Sigurdsoen, via Reuters)

Published on Monday, December 11, 2006 by the New York Times
Nobel Winner Warns of Dangers of Globalization
by Walter Gibbs
OSLO — The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who invented the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned today that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous “free-for-all highway.”

“Its lanes will be taken over by the giant trucks from powerful economies,” Dr. Yunus said during a lavish ceremony at which he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. “Bangladeshi rickshaws will be thrown off the highway.”

While international companies motivated by profit may be crucial in addressing global poverty, he said, nations must also cultivate grassroots enterprises and the human impulse to do good.

Challenging economic theories that he learned as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville in the 1970s, he said glorification of the entrepreneurial spirit has led to “one-dimensional human beings” motivated only by profit.

Dr. Yunus, 66, then took a direct jibe at the United States for its war on terror, telling about 1,000 dignitaries at Oslo’s City Hall that recent American military campaigns in Iraq and elsewhere had diverted global resources and attention from a more pressing project: halving worldwide poverty by 2015, as envisaged by the United Nations six years ago.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1211-06.htm