Resources for Teachers and Students on Muhammad Yunus
Prepare: Muhammad Yunus initiated the concept of
"microcredit" when he began to loan small amounts
of money, without collateral, to the poor of his native
Bangladesh. The concept has now spread to over 50 countries
worldwide, and has resulted in the founding of an international
bank-called the "Grameen" Bank, which means "rural"
in the Bengali language-with billions of dollars in assets.
His biography
is available on the Grameen Bank website.
Read:
Muhammad Yunus' Architects
of Peace essay is excerpted from his book Empowerment
of the Poor. In the essay, he asserts that poverty is not
created by the poor, but rather "by the institutions
we have built around us."
Explore: There is no better place to learn about
microcredit than on the website of the Grameen Bank itself,
which is found at http://www.grameen-info.org/index.html.
It quickly becomes apparent, when touring the site, that
the bank's mission is to break the cycle of poverty rather
than to amass wealth for the bankers themselves. Of particular
note is the educational component of the bank's website,
in such areas as the 16
"decisions" of the Grameen bank. In this
context, a "decision" is a condition of the loan
contract with which all loan applicants must abide. One
of the decisions, for example, is not to accept or offer
a dowry for weddings, nor to engage in the practice of child
marriage.
Write: Muhammad Yunus believes it is possible to
eliminate poverty worldwide. A world devoid of poverty would
be quite different from the one in which we live: not only
would economic systems be transformed in such a world, but
so would education, health care, and governance. But what
about peace? Would the elimination of poverty make significantly
effect issues of war and peace? Write a three-to-five page
imaginative essay speculating on whether the elimination
of poverty would indeed correspond to greater international
security. Could we anticipate spending appreciably less
on defense if we doubled our efforts to eradicate poverty?
Extend:
The Grameen Foundation USA (GFUSA) is a global organization
that combines microfinancing, new technologies, and innovative
thinking to help empower the poorest of the world's poor
to escape their poverty. In essence, they are attempting
to replicate the success of the Grameen Bank in other developing
countries. Muhammad Yunus is a member of the GFUSA board
of directors. The "get
involved" section of their website gives interested
persons the opportunity to sign up for e-news from the foundation,
to get involved in the microfinance movement as a volunteer,
or to donate directly to GFUSA charities.
Additional Resource: The Global Development Research
Center, which calls itself a "virtual organization,"
maintains a virtual
library on microcredit. There are currently editions
of the virtual library in English, Spanish, French and Japanese.
Biography of Muhammad
Yunnus
