Muhammad Yunus:
(Economist, Banker, Nobel Peace Prize recipient)
“I am riding the tiger. I
cannot just get off the tiger without drawing the attention of that tiger. So I
have to very quietly do it”
Born in the village of Bathua, (a seaport city) Chittagong
in 1940, Muhammad Yunus was the third of the fourteen of whom 5 died infancy.
Inspired by his mother to help the pooer, 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.
From 1993 to 1995,
Professor Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth
World Conference on Women, a post to which he was appointed by the UN secretary
general. He has served on the Global Commission of Women's Health, the Advisory
Council for Sustainable Economic Development and the UN Expert Group on Women
and Finance.
He developed concepts on micro-credit and micro – finance.
In 2006 Yunus
and Grameen Bank received the
to create economic and social development from below"
http://www.grameen-info.org
Grameen Bank's Four principles : 
At the heart of Grameen Bank's establishment,remained an ideal that was ingrained in its philosophy,that it always gave to the poor, uneducated, women of Bangladesh - OPPORTUNITY. The simple belief that anyone can do things when given an opportunity.
This belief paid off well when children who were once given small educational loans to finish primary education,began entering world-class universities.
Bank’s Organisational Principles & Management
- Exclusive focus on the poorest of the poor
- Initial support and gradual decentralization of functions and power to zonal levels
- Undertaking of social development agenda addressing basic needs of clientele
- Organisation of borrowers into groups to bring solidarity and participatory interaction
Mode of Operation : Excerpt from official website
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
familiarise themeselves 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.
Grameen Bank evaluates the poverty level of the borrowers
from time –to-time using the following key indicators : I am sharing a link
from their website that enlists 10 indicators .
Operational Statistics:
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 %.
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