Muhammad Yunus

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Muhammad Yunus (born 28 June 1940) is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist, and civil society leader who was given the Nobel Peace Prize for establishing the Grameen Bank and inventing the concept of microcredit and microfinance.

Entrepreneurs who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans are given these loans.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 was given to Yunus and the Grameen Bank for their efforts to stimulate economic and social growth from below."

"Serious peace cannot be achieved until large population groups find ways to break out of poverty," Yunus and Grameen Bank's report found that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development."

Yunus has received numerous national and international awards.

In 2009, Yunus was awarded the prestigious Bruton Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010, according to Foreign Policy magazine's list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. (YSB)

YSB develops and empowers social enterprises around the world to address and solve social problems.

YSB manages incubator funds for social enterprises in emerging countries and provides consultancy to businesses, governments, foundations, and NGOs as the international implementation arm for Yunus' vision of a new, humane capitalism. He became the Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland in 2012, a post he held until 2018.

He served as a professor of economics at Chittagong University in Bangladesh.

He has written several books about his finance work.

He is a founding board member of Grameen America and Grameen Foundation, which both support microcredit. Yunus also served on the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation, a public charity established in 1998 by American philanthropist Ted Turner's $1 billion donation to UN causes. Yunus was fired from his role at Grameen Bank in March 2011, citing civil rights and an age limit on his position.

Early life and education

Muhammad Yunus, the third of nine children, was born in Bathua, Bengalis, on the Kaptai road in Hathazari, Chittagong, Bangladesh's third province. His father, Hazi Dula Mia Shoudagar, a jeweler, was born in Mexico, and Sufia Khatun was his mother. His early childhood was spent in the village. His family immigrated to Chittagong in 1944 and he moved from village school to Lamabazar Primary School. His mother was afflicted with psychotic illness by 1949. Later, he completed the matriculation examination from Chittagong Collegiate School, finishing 16th out of 39,000 students in East Pakistan. He was a boy Scout in 1952 and India, then to Canada in 1955 to attend Jamborees. Later, when Yunus was attending Chittagong College, he became involved in cultural affairs and gained accolades for drama. He enrolled in the Department of Economics at Dhaka University in 1957 and completed his BA and MA in 1961.

Yunus joined the Bureau of Economics as a research assistant to Nurul Islam's economics research, Rehman Sobhan and Rehman Sobhan after his graduation. In 1961, he was appointed lecturer in economics at Chittagong College. He also established a profitable packaging plant on the side during that period. He was granted a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States in 1965. He earned his PhD in economics from the Vanderbilt University Graduate Program in Economic Growth (GPED) in 1971. Yunus was assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro from 1969 to 1972.

Yunus founded a citizen's group and ran the Bangladesh Information Center in 1971, with other Bangladeshis in the United States, to raise funds for independence. He also wrote the Bangladesh News from his home in Nashville. After the war, he returned to Bangladesh and was appointed to the government's Planning Commission headed by Nurul Islam. However, he found the job tedious and resigned as the head of Chittagong University as the Economics department's chief. After experiencing the 1974 famine, he became interested in poverty reduction and created a rural economic program as a research project. In 1975, he designed a Nabajug (New Era) Tebhaga Khamar (three-share farm), which was adopted by the government as part of the Packaged Input Program. Yunus and his associates suggested the Gram Sarkar (the village government) scheme in order to make the project more fruitful. The government established 40,392 village governments as a fourth layer of government, introduced by president Ziaur Rahman in the late 1970s. The High Court declared village governments illegal and unconstitutional on August 2, 2005, in reaction to a petition by Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST).

His proposal of microcredit for supporting innovators in many emerging countries inspired programs such as the Info lady Social Entrepreneurship Programme.

Personal life

When Yunus was attending Vanderbilt University in 1967, he met Vera Forostenko, a student of Russian literature at Vanderbilt University, and the daughter of Russian immigrants to Trenton, New Jersey, United States. They were married in 1970. Yunus's union with Vera came to an end just months after the birth of their baby girl, Monica Yunus, in 1979 in Chittagong, as Vera returned to New Jersey, insisting that Bangladesh was not a good place to raise a baby. Monica is a soprano based in New York City. Yunus married Afrozi Yunus, who was then a physics researcher at Manchester University, later on. She was later appointed a professor of physics at Jahangirnagar University. Deena Afroz Yunus' daughter was born in 1986.

Muhammad Ibrahim, Yunus' brother, is a professor of physics at the University of Dhaka and the director of The Center for Mass Education in Science (CMES), which brings science education to adolescent girls in villages. Mohammed Jahangir, Bangladesh's other brother, was a television presenter and a social activist.

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Early career

Yunus discovered that very little loans could make a significant difference to a poor person during visits to the village of Jobra near Chittagong University in 1976. Village women who made bamboo furniture had to borrow bamboo from usurious lenders and remit their income to the lenders. Due to the high risk of default, traditional banks did not want to make tiny loans to the poor. However, Yunus expected that the poor would repay the loan and therefore microcredit would be a profitable company model, given the opportunity. Yunus lent US$27 of his money to 42 women in the village, who made a net loss of BDT 0.50 (US$0.02) per month on the loan. Yunus is thus credited with the development of microcredit.

Yunus was able to lend to the poor in Jobra in December 1976. The institution continued to operate, obtaining loans from other banks for its projects. It had 28,000 members by 1982. Grameen Bank, a part-fledged bank for poor Bangladeshis, opened on October 1st. (1983) Grameen Bank ("Village Bank" was renamed. The bank uses a system of "solidarity groups" to ensure repayment. These small informal groups apply for loans together, and their members act as co-owners of repayment and promoter of one another's attempts at economic independence.

Grameen began to diversify in the late 1980s by focusing on underutilized fishing ponds and irrigation pumps like deep tube wells. These divergent industries began to develop into separate companies in 1989. Grameen Motsho ("Grameen Fisheries Foundation") and the irrigation scheme was named Grameen Krishi ("Grameen Agriculture Foundation" for the fisheries project. The Grameen venture developed into a multi-faceted group of profitable and non-profit ventures, including Grameen Trust and Grameen CyberNet Limited, Grameen Knitwear Limited, and Grameen Knitwear Limited, as well as Grameen Telecom, Bangladesh's largest private phone company. The Village Phone (Polli Phone) project of GP started in March 1997 and 2007 and has helped to 260,000 rural poor in over 50,000 villages.

The success of the Grameen microfinance model sparked similar efforts in over 100 developing countries and also in industrial nations, including the United States. Grameen's emphasis on women is maintained in several microcredit programs. More than 94 percent of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and are more likely than men to devote their income to their families.

Yunus was named an Ashoka: Innovators for the Public Global Academy Member in 2001 for his work with Grameen. Grameen's social business model (GSBM), according to its book Grameen Social Business Model, has evolved from being theoretical to an inspiring activity adopted by leading universities (e.g., Franck Riboud), entrepreneurs (e.g., Danone), and multinational companies (e.g., Danone) around the world. Rashidul Bari of Grameen Bank explains that Yunus demonstrated how the entrepreneurial spirit could inspire poor women and alleviate poverty. According to one conclusion drawn from Yunus' theories, the poor are like a "bonsai tree" and will do a lot if they have access to the social sector that aims to help them become self-sufficient.

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