Tessa: I recently had the very good fortune to attend the honorary degree conferral of Dr. Yunus at UBC. For those who are not familiar with Dr. Yunus he is the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work in microcredit and the Grameen Bank. The idea behind microcredit is to help impoverished families earn living wages by giving small interest free loans primarily to women. This simple idea has helped to transform many villages in Bangladesh and has been exported to many other countries. The Grameen Bank is founded by Dr. Yunus and is owned by the lenders. There was something very pure, human and unpolitical about this speech. Not too many things give me hope but this did. Guess that’s why he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Watch video.
April 4, 2008...8:58 pm
Dr. Muhammad Yunus: Microcredit &;The Grameen Bank
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5 Comments
June 16, 2008 at 10:35 am
Burning question: Has micro credit done a lot?
found a good article and book on micro credit and grameen
bank: http://microcredit-book.blogspot.com/
Contributors of this book are Doug Henwood, Patrick Bond, Bosse Kramsjo, Badruddin Umar, Susan F. Feiner and Durcilla K. Barker, Farooque Chowdhury, Robert Pollin, Gina Neff , Anu Mohammad, Omar Tareq Chowdhury.
Here of the excellent article of this book:
The metamorphosis of micro-credit debtor
Farooque Chowdhury
June 18, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Hi there,
Thanks for stopping by. I’ll check out those resources. I think there are definitely issues with micro-credit, particularly as it would apply to certain socio-economic situations in North America. but Dr. Yunus’ talk did give me hope that there could be a bridge between classes, and that this bridge seemed to embrace something of the best in human spirit. His talk about Danon yogurt and bridging big business with micro credit kinda worried me though.
July 7, 2008 at 5:12 am
The “best in the human spirit”? Did he repeat, from his autobiography, this philosophical gem?: ‘I believe that “government”, as we know it today, should pull out of most things except for law enforcement and justice, national defense and foreign policy, and let the private sector, a “Grameenized private sector”, a social-consciousness-driven private sector, take over their other functions.’
For more on the dangers of Yunus for Third World social policy, see baywood.metapress.com/index/9160Q66727253412.pdf
July 10, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Hi there,
No, “the best in the human spirit” was actually my comment. I was quite moved by his talk. I understand though, just from the comments on this blog that this is clearly a complicated issue and naturally the downside of microcredit wasn’t addressed at the lecture given by Dr. Yunus.
August 25, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Hi Condofire,
My name is Wendy, and I’m a member of Impact Entrepreneurship Group, Canada’s largest non-profit, youth-run organization dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship among youth.
I see that you wrote about microcredit and the Grameen bank, which is something our organization is quite passionate about. We’re hosting a Microcredit Competition across Canada in October, and we would like to ask for your help. (for information, please go to http://impactvancouver2008.wordpress.com/)
If you could e-mail me back, that would be great.
Thanks!