Interview
Paving the Way Out of Poverty
Published by: TimePublished Date: 13 October, 2006By Ishaan Tharoor As the proverb goes, Muhammad Yunus taught Bangladesh how to fish. Beginning only with $27, the 66-year-old former economics professor from Chittagong built an institution which uplifted impoverished millions in his country and, if you listen to him, portends the end of global poverty. His Grameen Bank—which is named after the Bengali word for "village"—extended credit to rural poor, empowering entire commu...
The Greatest Happiness of Muhammad Yunus or: Throw Out the Old System
Solving Human ProblemsIn his four-decade journey from microfinance to social business, 75-year-old Bangladeshi economist and banker Muhammad Yunus learned how small steps to solve problems become ‘mighty rivers’ of sustainability that can spread across the world. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 in recognition of his success in creating a bank for the poor.Professor Yunus, most of our readers know you as the founder of Grameen Bank and as the 2006 Nobel Laureate. What has cha...
Muhammad Yunus on the Arab Spring, Global Change, and the Real Opportunity at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Published by: Knowledge@WhartonPublished Date: 29 May, 2012 A Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus has dedicated much of his life to helping the poorest in developing countries. The former economist is now traveling the world, promoting an idea for a new economic model that he calls social business.The emphasis of social business, Yunus says, is not on making money, but rather unleashing human capability and valuing human creativity. Of all the natur...
Interview with Muhammad Yunus : his vision of social business
Published on - August 7, 2014 Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize (2006), sometimes called the "banker of the poor" and founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, dedicated to microcredit, now chairs the Yunus Centre to raise funds and provide guidance in social business to countries in the North as in the South. Having established structures of social business with many Western companies, Mr Yunus is convinced that his concept based on the principle of "no loss, no dividends" is a new capitalist ro...
Lunch with the FT: Muhammad Yunus
By Martin Dickson The Nobel Peace Prize-winner and economist drinks a glass of water and talks about microcreditThis is awkward: I am about to sit down to lunch with a man who has just told me he does not want to eat anything with me.Nothing personal, you understand. It is just that Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist famed for starting the global microcredit movement, has already eaten when he arrives for Lunch with the FT, an interview whose essential featu...
Q&A: Muhammad Yunus
The microfinance pioneer and Nobel prize winner talks to Gines Haro Pastor about his future plans, supporting other social businesses and how the Grameen bank evolved Gines Haro Pastor Guardian Professional, Friday 29 July 2011 06.00 BST You usually use the term social business instead of social enterprise. Can you explain the difference between them?What I was trying to do was to take [entrepreneurship] in one particular direction: turning it into creating a social busines...
National Microfinance Conference 2009 in New Delhi
Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, has been a great inspiration to the entire microfinance community. Microfinance Focus congratulates Dr Yunus and takes the opportunity to republish an exclusive interview that Dr. Yunus had given to it on March 30 on the sidelines of the Sa-Dhan's National Microfinance Conference 2009 in New Delhi. It is a show piece of Dr yunus's views on microfinance that will have an enduring impact on the community forever:MF FOCUS: Mic...
The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs
Interview with Muhammad Yunus, author of Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs It all started with a gift of $27. In 1974, Muhammad Yunus was an economics professor atChittagong University in Bangladesh when a combination of war, natural disasters and an international oil crisis toppled his country into a devastating famine. How could he simply teach elegant theories of the free market, he thought, while hunger and poverty threatened th...
Beyond Profit: A Talk With Muhammad Yunus
By DAVID BORNSTEIN Today, in a ceremony at the United States Capitol, Congressional leaders will present the founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, with the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of his “efforts to combat global poverty.” The award places Yunus in the company of a small group of people – including Norman Borlaug, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and Mother Teresa — who have received t...
Fighting poverty with $30 loans-Q & A Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus is a man who changed the world. Microcredit was the first time many poor people had access to financial services. Today we have 8.5 million borrowers. Cumulatively, we have given out over $11 billion. Now every time I want to address a problem, I create a business. Muhammad Yunus is a man who changed the world. By coming up with a way to lend poor people as little as $30 to start businesses, he reduced poverty so much that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Now he is sp...
Microcredit is a business; business to help people
Professor Muhammad Yunus is the father of microcredit and the founder of Grameen Bank. A determination to help create a world free of poverty inspired Professor Muhammad Yunus to experiment with providing collateral free loans to the poor in his native Bangladesh in the 1970s. The experiment was a success and led to the development of the Grameen Bank, to provide microfinance to the poor. In 2006, Prof. Yunus and the Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their effort...
Interview with PROF. MUHAMMAD YUNUS in Dhaka
Monika Korber: I read a little bit in your books, I heard one of your speeches and I was wondering, what are the milestones in your life, that led you to get into the social business, to help people?PROF. MUHAMMAD YUNUS: I would say the major thing was something that I discovered during the student time in the school. When I was 15 years old I had an opportunity to participate in a Boy Scout trip through North America and almost all over Europe. So I could go outside and see the world whil...
The Man who invented social business -EY interview
The Man who invented social business (EY interview)The modestmoney-lending scheme that Muhammad Yunus launched four decades ago to support villagers in Bangladesh has sincebecome a global force for good. The Nobel Prize winner explains how microfinance turns the traditional economic system on its head and puts power in the hands of the people.The best-known anecdote from the long and storied career of economist and social entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus is the one about the extremely modest beginnin...
The GreenMoney Interview
The GreenMoney InterviewWhen award-winning filmmaker Holly Mosher read about 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and the story of Grameen Bank’s microcredit for women in Bangladesh, she was fascinated. Why had an economist and a bank won the prize for peace and not the prize for economics? And how had one man gone from loaning $27 to 42 people, to helping one out of every 1,000 people on earth? With these questions in mind, she embarked on a film about his work.However, when she r...
The business of caring - VISION Interview
Muhammad Yunus founded Grameen Bank, the microcredit ‘bank for the poor’, that is now lending over one and a half billion dollars each year. He explains his philosophy behind his caring approach to commerce What does it feel like to win a Nobel prize? For Professor Mohammed Yunus, it was the legitimacy that the prize brought to his work with the poor, rather than any accolade, that meant the most to him. “Winning the prize was an exciting experience. It gives you an oppor...