Muhammad Yunus
was born in 28th June, 1940 in the village of Bathua, in Hathazari, Chittagong,
the business centre of what was then Eastern Bengal. He was the third of 14
children of whom five died in infancy. His father was a successful goldsmith
who always encouraged his sons to seek higher education. But his biggest
influence was his mother, Sufia Khatun, who always helped any poor that knocked
on their door. This inspired him to commit himself to eradication of poverty.
His early childhood years were spent in the village. In 1947, his family moved
to the city of Chittagong, where his father had the jewelery business.
In 1974, Professor Muhammad Yunus led
his students on a field trip to a poor village. They interviewed a woman who
made bamboo stools, and learnt that she had to borrow the equivalent of 15p to
buy raw bamboo for each stool made. After repaying the middleman, sometimes at
rates as high as 10% a week, she was left with a penny profit margin. Had she
been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to
amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level.
Realizing that there must be something
terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his
own hands, and from his own pocket lent the equivalent of ? 17 to 42
basket-weavers. He found that it was possible with this tiny amount not only to
help them survive, but also to create the spark of personal initiative and
enterprise necessary to pull themselves out of poverty.
Against the
advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out 'micro-loans', and
in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning 'village bank' founded on principles
of trust and solidarity.
The Grameen
Bank Project (Grameen means "rural" or "village" in Bangla
language) came into operation with the following objectives:
·
extend
banking facilities to poor men and women;
·
eliminate
the exploitation of the poor by money lenders;
·
create
opportunities for self-employment for the vast multitude of unemployed people
in rural Bangladesh;
·
bring
the disadvantaged, mostly the women from the poorest households, within the
fold of an organizational format which they can understand and manage by
themselves; and
·
reverse
the age-old vicious circle of "low income, low saving & low
investment", into virtuous circle of "low income, injection of
credit, investment, more income, more savings, more investment, more
income".
In Bangladesh
today, Grameen has 2,564 branches, with 19,800 staff serving 8.29 million
borrowers in 81,367 villages. On any working day Grameen collects an average of
$1.5 million in weekly installments. Of the borrowers, 97% are women and over
97% of the loans are paid back, a recovery rate higher than any other banking
system. Grameen methods are applied in projects in 58 countries, including the
US, Canada, France, The Netherlands and Norway.
No comments:
Post a Comment