Nobel Prize Winner

Muhammad Yunus was solely dedicated to helping those who are desperately in need of being helped. In 1976, Muhammad Yunus had the idea of lending money to a villager that was in need of $2 to complete a project she was working on. Muhammad Yunus kept the process going of lending people his own money and in 1983 the Grameen Bank was founded in Bangladesh. Muhammad Yunus took a great risk by lending money to people he knew would not be able to pay it back or have any type of collateral. Even though the average loan to a borrower from this bank is $75, in Bangladesh that is a lot of money. But these people receiving the loans are very talented at making things and could make an income on selling what they decide to use the $75 towards.
The Grameen bank doesn’t just lend money, they also teach responsibility and discipline to its borrowers. A group of five people is sent to do training which lasts for a week. The training consists of building latrines, boil water, practice family planning and educate their children. This training process can really come in handy for those who are poor in Bangladesh because they haven’t been taught the right way to take care of themselves let alone their families. But the Grameen Bank, Grameen meaning “rural area,” can now be found in over 18,000 of Bangladesh’s 68,000 villages. Over 90% of the over 5.3 million borrowers in Bangladesh are women.
The support that the Grameen Bank has showed some of the countries poorest people is extraordinary. Not only do they lend money and teach necessary essentials, they have also built over 85,000 houses for people the people of Bangladesh. The residents usually add on to the housing by making their walls out of bamboo sticks. For around $300 the residents home is built with four cement pillars, a tin roof to have something over the residents head, and a latrine outside of the house for the resident to use as a restroom. These houses can protect the residents from floods and cyclones. Most of these people haven’t had a chance to live in a house that is able to stand up to these conditions.
Muhammad Yunus once said “People can change their own live, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They are not asking for charity; charity is no solution to poverty. Reducing poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, so people can change their lives. We didn’t do anything special - all we did was lend to the poor people and that makes the trick. That makes the change.” These are strong words coming from a strong person. Muhammad Yunus realized that poor people have a chance to maintain themselves but they just need the right inspiration from the right individuals. As long as they are willing to train and pay the money back that they owe. Muhammad Yunus’ practices came in handy so much that there are now over 100 other countries using the same methods as Yunus used in his home country of Bangladesh.
And finally, in 2006 Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts create economic and social development from below.” Muhammad Yunus and his accomplishments will always be remember as one of the most powerful world movements to get poor people back onto their feet. Not only did he lend out his own money but he also taught these people how to take care of themselves and also gave some of these people a stable house to live under. Now if more people in this world could think the same as Muhammad Yunus, we would all live in a more peaceful and a poverty free world.Muhammad Yunus is a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner. He was born June 28, 1940 in the seaport city of Chittagong, British India which is now known as Bangladesh. Professor Muhammad Yunus, with his modest, funny, and energetic attitude, went to school in the capital city of Bangladesh at Dhaka University before attending Vanderbilt University on a Fulbright Scholarship to study economics. In 1969, Professor Muhammad Yunus received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt. He later returned to Bangladesh to become the head of the economics department at Chittagong University. From the years 1993-1995, Muhammad Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on women and has also served on the Global Commissions of Women’s Health.