Paris, one of the three candidate cities bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, has decided to give a central role to Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus's three zeroes vision—zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions.
On November 8, Yunus and Ann Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, together with Etienne Thobois, the president of the committee for promoting the city of Paris as a candidate for holding the Olympics in 2024, signed a three-way agreement in this regard, said a press release from the Yunus Centre.
The agreement was formalised in a signing ceremony at a press conference at the mayor's office in the historic Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) convened by Hidalgo.
Paris is one of three cities, alongside Budapest and Los Angeles, still in the running for hosting rights after two other hopefuls – Rome and Hamburg – withdrew their bidding, which started in 2015.
Paris wish to be the third city, after London and Athens, to host the world's largest sports extravaganza for a third time after having hosted the games in 1900 and 1924. The 2024 games will be the 33rd edition of the games, with the 32nd to be hosted by Tokyo in 2020. The most recent games were hosted by Rio de Janeiro earlier this year.
While addressing the press conference, the mayor of Paris announced that she had invited Yunus to hold the Global Social Business summit in Paris next year, scheduled to be held on November 6 and 7, as a part of the initiative to spread social business programmes throughout Paris.
During his recent visit to Paris, Professor Yunus also inaugurated the Social Business Academia Conference 2016 which was hosted by HEC Paris and Yunus Centre on November 9 -10 at the famous business school in Jouy en Josas outside Paris.
Professor Yunus also attended events organised by Danone Communities, and met with a group of entrepreneurs from North Africa and the Middle East.
