Sustainable societies are more important than sustainable
construction.
Sustainable humans can provide for themselves, stand on
their own two feet.
But there are many people today who live in extreme poverty,
with no opportunity to lead sustainable lives. These people we must help first.
At the start of the millennium a goal was set to halve the number of
poverty-stricken people by 2015. A great effort is required if we want to
achieve a sustainable world.
- Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus is a great
nonconformist personality who has been instrumental as a banker, economist and has
received a Noble peace prize.
A brief introduction of Dr. Muhammad Yunus:-
-
Muhammad Yunus is
a Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace
Prize recipient.
-
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.
- Inspired by his mother to help the poor, he
committed himself to eradicating poverty.
- Professor Yunus studied in Dhaka University and
later received a Ph.D. economics from Vanderbilt in 1969 and became an
assistant professor at Middle Tennessee University the following year.
- He served as an instrumental member in
International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women,
Global Commission of Women's Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable
Economic Development and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance.
-
He came up with the concept of micro-credit and
micro – finance.
-
In 2006 Yunus and Grameen
Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts through
microcredit.
The four pillar on which Grameen bank is established:
Conventional Banks
|
Grameen Banks
|
Cater to rich –“more you have,
more you get”
|
Cater to poor with a little or
no money
|
More than 99% of the borrowers
are men
|
97% of the borrowers are women
out of a total 8 million borrowers
|
Collateral is needed by talking
loans
|
Collateral is not needed
|
Rich own the banks
|
Borrowers are the owners of the
bank
|
- The sole aim behind the foundation of Graameen Bank is to 'give to the poor, uneducated, women of Bangladesh
- The simple belief that anyone can do the thing when the opportunity is given and this belief paid off well hen children who were given small education loans to finish primary education began entering World -class universities.
- The function of Grameen Bank is very Unorthodox compared to conventional bank and that is one of the reason of its success
Genesis of Grameen Bank:-
The origin of Grameen Bank can be traced back to 1976 when
Professor Muhammad Yunus, Head of the Rural Economics Program at the
University of Chittagong, launched an action research project to examine
the possibility of designing a credit delivery system to provide banking
services targeted at the rural poor.
Objectives of Grameen
Bank:-
-
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;
-
To 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 s avings,
more investment, more income".
Achievements of
Grameen Bank:-
The United Nations has declared 2005 the “International Year
of Microcredit.” This counts as an achievement for Muhammad Yunus. With his
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the economics professor spurns social, political,
and economic prejudice and shows how to help the poorest of the poor: by
lending them a few dollars and requiring them to pay back their microcredit.
Yunus’ concept has been copied in over a hundred countries, producing lasting
improvement around the world. At the Holcim Forum, Muhammad Yunus impressed the
international audience with his lively lecture and with his charisma. As a
member of the Advisory Board, Yunus will help shape the future of the Holcim
Foundation for Sustainable Construction – and help shape the definition of
sustainable construction.
Muhammad Yunus spoke plain English at the Holcim Forum:
“People are not poor because they are stupid or lazy. People are poor because
they have no financial structures to help them! Poverty is a structural
problem, not a personal problem.”
Working of Grameen Bank:-
The mode of operation of Grameen Bank is as follows:-
A bank branch is set up with a branch manager and a
number of center managers and covers an area of about 15 to 22 villages. The
manager and the workers start by visiting villages to familiarize themselves
with the local milieu in which they will be operating and identify the
prospective clientele, as well as explain the purpose, the functions, and the
mode of operation of the bank to the local population. Groups of five
prospective borrowers are formed; in the first stage, only two of them are
eligible for, and receive, a loan. The group is observed for a month to see if
the members are conforming to the rules of the bank. Only if the first two
borrowers begin to repay the principal plus interest over a period of six
weeks, do the other members of the group become eligible themselves for a loan.
Because of these restrictions, there is substantial group pressure to keep
individual records clear. In this sense, the collective responsibility of the
group serves as the collateral on the loan.
Highlights of the operation:-
Of the total equity of the bank, 94 % is owned by borrowers
and 6 % by Government of Bangladesh. It has more than 8 million borrowers of
which 97 % are women. The bank has a loan recovery rate of 96.67 %.
“One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what
poverty was like.”
-Muhammad Yunus
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