Boys' Brigade Citizenship S2By Khiu Zu Ming, Wilson Lim, Kevan Koh

Muhammad Yunus

Who is he?Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader

awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank

Pioneered the concepts of microcredit and microfinance.

Loans given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans

received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010

awarded the Golden Biatec Award (highest award bestowed by Slovakia’s Informal Economic Forum Economic Club)

What inspired Mr. Yunus?• observed famine of 1974

• became involved in poverty reduction

• established a rural economic program as a research project.

• In 1975, he developed a Nabajug (New Era) Tebhaga Khamar (three share farm) which the government adopted as the Packaged Input Programme.

• to make the project more effective, Yunus and his associates proposed the Gram Sarkar (the village government) programme

GRAMEEN BANK

• Grameen Bank - Village Bank

• Microcredit programmes provide small loans to very poor people for self-employment projects that generate income, which allows them to care for themselves and their families.

• encountered violent radical leftists, conservative clergy, telling women that they would be denied a Muslim burial if they borrowed money from Grameen

• issued US$6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers

• To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of "solidarity groups". Small informal groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment and support one another's efforts at economic self-advancement

• idea of microcredit inspired over 100 developing countries

Development of 'Grameen'• During 1980s, he started to attend to underutilized fishing ponds and

irrigation pumps like deep tube wells

• In 1989, these interests started growing into separate organizations. The fisheries project became Grameen Motsho ("Grameen Fisheries Foundation") and the irrigation project became Grameen Krishi ("Grameen Agriculture Foundation").

• The initiative grew into a multi-faceted group of profitable and non-profit ventures, including major projects like Grameen Trust and Grameen Fund, which runs equity projects like Grameen Software Limited, Grameen CyberNet Limited, and Grameen Knitwear Limited, and Grameen Telecom, which has a stake in Grameenphone (GP), the biggest private phone company in Bangladesh.

• From start in March 1997 to 2007, GP's Village Phone (Polli Phone) project had brought cell-phone ownership to 260,000 rural poor in over 50,000 villages.

Qualities of Mr. Yunus• He observed and saw that even poor women have enormous potential as

entrepreneurs

• they did not squander their money on snacks or luxuries as many men did

• improve their families’ diet or pay for school for their kids, contributing to the cycle of poverty alleviation.

• He thought differently from the rest and through his commited observations, he decided to work on such issues

• He didn't start his social venture by targetting the obvious and recognisable problems, he looked into different aspects in a community and worked towards it

• He understood the significance of social entrepreneurship as he ensures that changes can be made, especially problems that are somewhat hidden

• He advised to start small before extending such social entrepeurship