…their efforts to create economic and social development from below. Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty….Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.
Yunus is seen here in this 13 October 2006 AFP photo being kissed by his daughter Dina after receiving the news of his award in Dhaka
In fact, Yunus pioneered a system of lending money to the poor, in the world’s poorest countries, as a means of lifting themseleves up by their own bootstrap that has proved far more effective in alleviating chronic poverty than any welfare program or trickle-down theory.
When a South African friend – who works on Third World sustainable development issues – first told me about Yunus and Grameen bank in the late-1980s, I was incredulous to say the least. After all, my intellectual skepticism and economic chauvinism could not fathom how providing loans of $50 to $200 (a.k.a. “microcredit”) to women, almost exclusively, to buy everything from cows to sewing machines, would have any impact on poverty reduction in poor communities – even in Bangledesh.
But today, with *6.61 borrowers, 97 per cent of whom are women, 2,226 branches employing 18,795 Bangledeshis, having loaned US$5.72 billion to these microcredit borrowers and been repaid US$5.07 (a loan recovery rate of an unprecedented 98.85%), the good news is that my skepticism and chauvinism have been proved spectacularly myopic and wrong.
Yet, no one is happier than I am that Yunus and Grameen Bank have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their success; no one, that is, except Yunus himself:
I am so, so happy, it’s really a great news for the whole nation. [Yunus upon learning he had won the Nobel Peace Prize]
NOTE: I feel obliged to explain my belated recognition of the Nobel Committee’s rather belated recognition of Yunus and Grameen Bank. As it happened, although there are weeks when I’m hard-pressed to find any story for my “Good (news) Friday” feature, last week I was gifted with two.
In fact, by the time I learned that Yunus was the winner of the peace prize last Friday, Orhan Pamuk was already featured, here, for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Therefore, I decided that, instead of raining on Pamuk’s parade, I’d save the good news about Yunus’s award for today.
ENDNOTE: Click here to read my entreaty over at CNN to fellow Caribbean natives to determine whether they are as concerned about the welfare of abandoned African babies as some rich white celebrities appear to be….
Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank
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