Muhammad Yunus

O Banco Grameen, do Bangladesh, e o seu fundador, Muhammad Yunus foram distinguidos hoje com o Nobel da Paz pelos seus esforços na ajuda ao desenvolvimento económico e social naquele país, através de programas inovadores, como o microcrédito.

Muhammad Yunus was born in Bangladesh and earned his Ph.D. in economics at Vanderbilt University. After returning to Bangladesh to teach, he was inspired by the country's crushing famine of 1974 to leave academia to help the poor. His revolutionary microcredit concept began by giving out loans totaling twenty-seven dollars to forty-two villagers with no collateral. Microcredit has now spread to more than fifty countries worldwide. With a repayment rate of 98 percent and two million borrowers, Yunus's $2.5 billion Grameen Bank has expanded into dozens of other projects for empowering the poor, including telecommunications and venture capital.