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Muhammad Yunus        

Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Founder of Grameen Bank, Microcredit Pioneer

What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality? To some, it sounds impossible. But Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is doing exactly that. As the founder and chairman of Grameen Bank, and the founder of the Yunus Centre, Yunus pioneered microcredit, the innovative banking program that provides the poor — mainly women — with small loans they use to launch businesses and lift their families out of poverty.

Muhammad Yunus’s vision is the total eradication of poverty worldwide. "Grameen," he says, "is a message of hope, a program for putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." This work represents a fundamental rethink on the economic relationship between the rich and the poor, their rights and their obligations. Yunus's methods have been recognized globally, leading to him receiving more than 112 awards from 26 countries, including state honors from ten countries, and prestigious awards like the Ramon Magsaysay Award and the World Food Prize.

Credit is the last hope left to those faced with absolute poverty. That is why Muhammad Yunus believes that the right to credit should be recognized as a fundamental human right. It is this struggle and the unique and extraordinary methods he invented to combat human despair that Yunus recounts here with humility and conviction. It is also the view of a man familiar with both Eastern and Western cultures — on the failures and potential for good of industrial countries. It is an appeal for action: we must concentrate on promoting the will to survive and the courage to build in the first and most essential element of the economic cycle — Man.

Speech Topics


Microcredit & Empowering the Poorest of the Poor: A Story of Success & Hope

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business & the Future of Capitalism

News


Muhammad Yunus: Our Torchbearer | Huffington Post
In the middle of the class, one of my students asked, “Do you know Muhammad Yunus?” I did not know what to say and why the student asked me such a ...
Muhammad Yunus on How to Change the World: Do the Reverse ...
Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank, the pioneering Dhaka-based organization that spread microcredit and microfinance globally. Professor ...
Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus: The Key To Super-Happiness
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus on how anyone can become super happy, and how beggars become entrepreneurs.

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