Sunday, 17th February 2008
Straight Talking from a Nobel Prize-Winning Economist-Turned-Unconventional-Banker-cum-Author
Made a worthwhile journey today from the depths of North Devon to Bristol - along with Phil Pugsley - a friend from the Barnstaple based charity Amigos International - to hear Dr Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank - and father of the microcredit - expound for an hour or so on how he turned the conventional banking industry's concept of creditworthiness on its head to provide a route out of poverty for his country-folk - through small unsecured loans to thousands of deserving households and microbusinnesses. And with a loan default rate of a mere 1 - 2% he set an example that has since been emulated in many other countries in the developing world as well as parts of Europe and the US.
Yunus is now focussing his efforts on the development of social businesses as the answer to a world-wide sustainable long-term route away from dependency on handouts (i.e.conventional charity) and the eventual elimination of world poverty. He expands on this in his new book Creating a World Without Poverty:Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (ISBN: 1586484931).
You can buy a discounted brand-new hardback copy of this tome for under nine quid (plus p+p) by going to our "Online Shopping" page and hitting the link to Abebooks (that way we make a small commission on any sales for BookRelief too!). I'll have more to say on the book myself once I've read it - and if you want more backgound on the achivements of Dr Yunus you can follow the link to this recent Guardian article.
As well as a short article on social business writtten by Dr Yunus which you can find at:
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