Banker to the Poor

by Muhammad Yunus

Copyright 1999, 2003 by Muhammad Yunus. All Rights Reserved.

Categories:  Business  Contemporary  Politics

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Description

In 1983 Muhammad Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with miniscule loans. He aimed to help the poor by supporting the spark of personal initiative and enterprise by which they could lift themselves out of poverty forever. It was an idea born on a day in 1976 when he loaned $27 from his own pocket to forty-two people living in a tiny village. They were stool makers who only needed enough credit to purchase the raw materials for their trade. Yunus's loan helped them break the cycle of poverty and changed their lives forever. His solution to world poverty, founded on the belief that credit is a fundamental human right, is brilliantly simple: loan poor people money on terms that are suitable to them, teach them a few sound financial principles, and they will help themselves. Yunus's theories work. Grameen Bank has provided 3.8 billion dollars to 2.4 million families in rural Bangladesh. Today, more than 250 institutions in nearly 100 countries operate micro-credit programs based on the Grameen methodology, placing Grameen at the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through micro-lending.

Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Praise for Banker to the Poor

"The Grameen Bank's record is illuminating and inspiring. More than 92 percent of its borrowers are women, commonly heads of families. They maintain an admirable rate of repayment—97 percent. This is an aid program that works."
—The New York Times

"Muhammad Yunus is a practical visionary who has improved the lives of millions of people in his native Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world. Banker to the Poor [is ] well-reasoned yet passionate."
—Los Angeles Times

"[Yunus's ] ideas have already had a great impact on the Third World, and . . . hearing his appeal for a 'poverty-free world' from the source itself can be as stirring as that all-American myth of bootstrap success."
—The Washington Post

About the Author

Muhammad Yunus was born in Chittagong, a seaport in Bangladesh. The third of fourteen children, five of whom died in infancy, he was educated at Dhaka University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. In 1972 he became head of the economics department at Chittagong University. He is the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank.

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 1999, 2003 by Muhammad Yunus. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address PublicAffairs, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1321, New York, NY 10107.

Previously published by PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Cover design: Keenan.

Opening Lines (Experimental)

In the year 1974 Bangladesh fell into the grip of famine.
The university where I taught and served as head of the Economics Department was located in the southeastern extremity of the country, and at first we did not pay much attention to the newspaper stories of death and starvation in the remote ...

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