This is an article from The Toronto Globe and Mail POSTED AT 9:16 AM EDT ON 13/10/06.
It is the most positive news item that I recall ever coming upon. People like Muhammad Yunus give me hope for our future.
Banker to the poor takes Nobel Peace Prize
Associated Press
Oslo Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pioneering the use of seemingly insignificant loans microcredit to lift millions out of poverty.
Through Yunus's efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cellphone they desperately needed to get ahead.
"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel Committee said in its citation. "Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights."
Mr. Yunus, 65, is the first Noble Prize winner from Bangladesh, a poverty-stricken country of about 141 million people located on the Bay on Bengal.
Related to this article
Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his econconomic and social work on behalf of the poor. (Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images)
"I am so, so happy, it's really a great news for the whole nation," Mr. Yunus told The Associated Press shortly after the prize was announced. He was reached by telephone at his home in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
Grameen Bank was the first lender to hand out microcredit, giving very small loans to poor Bangladeshis who did not qualify for loans from conventional banks. No collateral is needed and repayment is based on an honour system.
Anyone can qualify for a loan the average is about $227 but recipients are put in groups of five and once two members of the group have borrowed money, the other three must wait for the funds to be repaid before they get a loan.
Grameen, which means "rural" in the Bengali language, says the method encourages social responsibility. The results are hard to argue with the bank says it has a 99-per-cent repayment rate.
Since Mr. Yunus gave out his first loans in 1974, microcredit schemes have spread throughout the developing world and are now considered a key approach to alleviating poverty and spurring development.
Mr. Yunus told AP in a 2004 interview that his "eureka moment" came while chatting to a shy woman with calloused fingers weaving bamboo stools.
Sufia Begum was a 21-year-old villager and mother of three when the economics professor met her in 1974 and asked her how much she earned. She replied that she borrowed about five taka (10 cents) from a middleman for the bamboo for each stool.
All but two cents of that went back to the lender.
"I thought to myself, my God, for five takas she has become a slave," Mr. Yunus said in the interview.
"I couldn't understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things," he said.
The following day, he and his students did a survey in the woman's village, Jobra, and discovered that 43 of the villagers owed a total of 856 taka $27 (U.S.) or $31 (Canadian).
"I couldn't take it any more. I put the $27 (U.S.) out there and told them they could liberate themselves," he said, and pay him back whenever they could. The idea was to buy their own materials and cut out the middleman.
They all paid him back, day by day, over a year, and his spur-of-the-moment generosity grew into a full-fledged business concept that came to fruition with the founding of Grameen Bank in 1983.
Mr. Yunus and the bank will share in the $1.4 million prize as well as a gold medal and diploma.
The peace prize was the sixth and last Nobel prize announced this year. The others, for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics, were announced in Stockholm, Sweden.
In the years since its founding, the bank says it has lent $6.5-billion (Canadian) to more than six million Bangladeshis.
Worldwide, microcredit financing is estimated to have helped some 17 million people.
"Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the Nobel citation said.
Today the bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 per cent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. Its model of micro-financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.
The success has allowed Grameen Bank to expand its credit to include housing loans, financing for irrigation and fisheries as well as traditional savings accounts.
One of Mr. Yunus' aides, Dipal Barua, said the award was an "honour for millions of poor women who have made this possible."
It is the most positive news item that I recall ever coming upon. People like Muhammad Yunus give me hope for our future.
Banker to the poor takes Nobel Peace Prize
Associated Press
Oslo Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pioneering the use of seemingly insignificant loans microcredit to lift millions out of poverty.
Through Yunus's efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cellphone they desperately needed to get ahead.
"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel Committee said in its citation. "Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights."
Mr. Yunus, 65, is the first Noble Prize winner from Bangladesh, a poverty-stricken country of about 141 million people located on the Bay on Bengal.
Related to this article
Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his econconomic and social work on behalf of the poor. (Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images)
"I am so, so happy, it's really a great news for the whole nation," Mr. Yunus told The Associated Press shortly after the prize was announced. He was reached by telephone at his home in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.
Grameen Bank was the first lender to hand out microcredit, giving very small loans to poor Bangladeshis who did not qualify for loans from conventional banks. No collateral is needed and repayment is based on an honour system.
Anyone can qualify for a loan the average is about $227 but recipients are put in groups of five and once two members of the group have borrowed money, the other three must wait for the funds to be repaid before they get a loan.
Grameen, which means "rural" in the Bengali language, says the method encourages social responsibility. The results are hard to argue with the bank says it has a 99-per-cent repayment rate.
Since Mr. Yunus gave out his first loans in 1974, microcredit schemes have spread throughout the developing world and are now considered a key approach to alleviating poverty and spurring development.
Mr. Yunus told AP in a 2004 interview that his "eureka moment" came while chatting to a shy woman with calloused fingers weaving bamboo stools.
Sufia Begum was a 21-year-old villager and mother of three when the economics professor met her in 1974 and asked her how much she earned. She replied that she borrowed about five taka (10 cents) from a middleman for the bamboo for each stool.
All but two cents of that went back to the lender.
"I thought to myself, my God, for five takas she has become a slave," Mr. Yunus said in the interview.
"I couldn't understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things," he said.
The following day, he and his students did a survey in the woman's village, Jobra, and discovered that 43 of the villagers owed a total of 856 taka $27 (U.S.) or $31 (Canadian).
"I couldn't take it any more. I put the $27 (U.S.) out there and told them they could liberate themselves," he said, and pay him back whenever they could. The idea was to buy their own materials and cut out the middleman.
They all paid him back, day by day, over a year, and his spur-of-the-moment generosity grew into a full-fledged business concept that came to fruition with the founding of Grameen Bank in 1983.
Mr. Yunus and the bank will share in the $1.4 million prize as well as a gold medal and diploma.
The peace prize was the sixth and last Nobel prize announced this year. The others, for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics, were announced in Stockholm, Sweden.
In the years since its founding, the bank says it has lent $6.5-billion (Canadian) to more than six million Bangladeshis.
Worldwide, microcredit financing is estimated to have helped some 17 million people.
"Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the Nobel citation said.
Today the bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 per cent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh. Its model of micro-financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.
The success has allowed Grameen Bank to expand its credit to include housing loans, financing for irrigation and fisheries as well as traditional savings accounts.
One of Mr. Yunus' aides, Dipal Barua, said the award was an "honour for millions of poor women who have made this possible."
