Banker To The Poor

Author: Muhammad Yunus
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1586485466
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
The inspirational story of how Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus invented microcredit, founded the Grameen Bank, and transformed the fortunes of millions of poor people around the world. Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics in Bangladesh, who realized that the most impoverished members of his community were systematically neglected by the banking system -- no one would loan them any money. Yunus conceived of a new form of banking -- microcredit -- that would offer very small loans to the poorest people without collateral, and teach them how to manage and use their loans to create successful small businesses. He founded Grameen Bank based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, and it now provides $24 billion of micro-loans to more than nine million families. Ninety-seven percent of its clients are women, and repayment rates are over 90 percent. Outside of Bangladesh, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen have blossomed, and serve hundreds of millions of people around the world. The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is the moving story of someone who dreamed of changing the world -- and did.

Banker To The Poor

Author: Muhammd Yunus And Alan Jolisby Muhammad Yusus
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780143102915
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
&Lsquo;It&Rsquo;S Not People Who Aren&Rsquo;T Credit-Worthy. It&Rsquo;S Banks That Aren&Rsquo;T People-Worthy&Rsquo; &Mdash;Muhammad Yunus Muhammad Yunus, Winner Of The Nobel Peace Prize In 2006, Set Up The Grameen Bank In Bangladesh To Lend Tiny Sums To The Poorest Of The Poor, Who Were Shunned By Ordinary Banks. The Money Would Enable Them To Set Up The Smallest Village Enterprise And Pull Themselves Out Of Poverty. Today, Yunus&Rsquo;S System Of &Lsquo;Micro-Credit&Rsquo; Is Practised In Some Sixty Countries, And His Grameen Bank Is A Billion-Pound Business Acknowledged By World Leaders And The World Bank As A Fundamental Weapon In The Fight Against Poverty. Banker To The Poor Is Yunus&Rsquo;S Own Enthralling Story: Of How Bangladesh&Rsquo;S Terrible 1974 Famine Underlined The Need To Enable Its Victims To Grow More Food; Of Overcoming Scepticism In Many Governments And In Traditional Economic Thinking; And Of How Micro-Credit Was Extended Into Credit Unions In The West.

A World of Three Zeros

Author: Muhammad Yunus
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397584
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and bestselling author of Banker to the Poor offers his vision of an emerging new economic system that can save humankind and the planet Muhammad Yunus, who created microcredit, invented social business, and earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in alleviating poverty, is one of today's most trenchant social critics. Now he declares it's time to admit that the capitalist engine is broken -- that in its current form it inevitably leads to rampant inequality, massive unemployment, and environmental destruction. We need a new economic system that unleashes altruism as a creative force just as powerful as self-interest. Is this a pipe dream? Not at all. In the last decade, thousands of people and organizations have already embraced Yunus's vision of a new form of capitalism, launching innovative social businesses designed to serve human needs rather than accumulate wealth. They are bringing solar energy to millions of homes in Bangladesh; turning thousands of unemployed young people into entrepreneurs through equity investments; financing female-owned businesses in cities across the United States; bringing mobility, shelter, and other services to the rural poor in France; and creating a global support network to help young entrepreneurs launch their start-ups. In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new civilization emerging from the economic experiments his work has helped to inspire. He explains how global companies like McCain, Renault, Essilor, and Danone got involved with this new economic model through their own social action groups, describes the ingenious new financial tools now funding social businesses, and sketches the legal and regulatory changes needed to jumpstart the next wave of socially driven innovations. And he invites young people, business and political leaders, and ordinary citizens to join the movement and help create the better world we all dream of.

The World's Banker

Author: Sebastian Mallaby
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143036793
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Book Description
Never has the World Bank's relief work been more important than in the last nine years, when crises as huge as AIDS and the emergence of terrorist sanctuaries have threatened the prosperity of billions. This journalistic masterpiece by Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby charts those controversial years at the Bank under the leadership of James Wolfensohn—the unstoppable power broker whose daring efforts to enlarge the planet's wealth in an age of globalization and terror were matched only by the force of his polarizing personality. Based on unprecedented access to its subject, this captivating tour through the messy reality of global development is that rare triumph—an emblematic story through which a gifted author has channeled the spirit of the age. This edition features a new afterword by the author that analyzes the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as Wolfensohn's successor at the World bank

Creating a World Without Poverty

Author: Muhammad Yunus
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1586486675
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
The author describes his vision for an innovative business model that would combine the power of free markets with a quest for a more humane, egalitarian world that could help alleviate world poverty, inequality, and other social problems.

Banker to the Poor

Author: Muhammad Yunus
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458780287
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Muhammad Yunus is that rare thing; a bona fide visionary. His dream is the total eradication of poverty from the world. In 1983, against the advice of banking and government officials, Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with minuscule loans. Grameen Bank, based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a fortunate few, now provides over 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of Yunus's clients are women, and repayment rates are near 100 percent. Around the world, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen are blossoming, with more than three hundred programs established in the United States alone. Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join him in ''putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long.'' The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business. Muhammad Yunus was born in Bangladesh and earned his Ph.D. in economics in the United States at Vanderbilt University, where he was deeply influenced by the civil rights movement. He still lives in Bangladesh, and travels widely around the world on behalf of Grameen Bank and the concept of micro-credit.

Due Diligence

Author: David Roodman
Publisher: CGD Books
ISBN: 1933286539
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
The idea that small loans can help poor families build businesses and exit poverty has blossomed into a global movement. The concept has captured the public imagination, drawn in billions of dollars, reached millions of customers, and garnered a Nobel Prize. Radical in its suggestion that the poor are creditworthy and conservative in its insistence on individual accountability, the idea has expanded beyond credit into savings, insurance, and money transfers, earning the name microfinance. But is it the boon so many think it is? Readers of David Roodman's openbook blog will immediately recognize his thorough, straightforward, and trenchant analysis. Due Diligence, written entirely in public with input from readers, probes the truth about microfinance to guide governments, foundations, investors, and private citizens who support financial services for poor people. In particular, it explains the need to deemphasize microcredit in favor of other financial services for the poor.

Introduction To Microfinance

Author: Todd A Watkins
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9813140755
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Book Description
Microfinance has grown from the obscure efforts of a few philanthropic institutions into a global industry that reaches 150-200 million clients through the branches of thousands of institutions. Microfinance has matured from exclusively funding loans to providing savings, insurance, healthcare, and education. Yet many people still think of it narrowly as microcredit. Understanding remains thin of what the industry does, how it functions and why.Introduction to Microfinance provides a non-technical introduction to the broad array of inclusive financial and non-financial services for the world's poor. It explores the financial lives of those families, and the microfinance institutions and rapidly growing industry that serve them. Written in close collaboration with college students for college students, under the auspices of one of the US's leading undergraduate programs in microfinance, it is the first-ever introductory college textbook about microfinance.What is microfinance? What are its methods and why? Does it work? What are its prospects and challenges? Why is it controversial? This book tackles these questions and more.

How the Poor Can Save Capitalism

Author: John Hope Bryant
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1626560331
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
This book has a simple message for business leaders: you help yourselves by helping the poor. Instead of feeling as if the economy is working against them, the poor need to feel they have a stake in it so they will buy your products and put money in the bank. Supporting poor people's efforts to move into the middle class is the only way to enrich everyone, rich and poor alike.

Banker to the Poor

Author: Muhammad Yunus
Publisher: Aurum
ISBN: 184513754X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Book Description
Muhammad Yunus set up the Grameen Bank in his home country of Bangladesh with a loan of just £17, to lend tiny amounts of money to the poorest of the poor - those to whom no ordinary bank would lend. Most of his customers - as they still are - were illiterate women, wanting to set up the smallest imaginable village enterprises. It was his conviction that this new system of 'micro-credit', lending even such small sums, would give such people the spark of initiative needed to pull themselves out of poverty. Today, Yunus's system of micro-credit is practised around the world in some 60 countries, including the US, Canada and France. His Grameen Bank is now a billion-pound business. It is acknowledged by world leaders and by the World Bank to be a fundamental weapon in the fight against poverty. Banker to the Poor is Yunus's enthralling story of how he did it: how the terrible famine in Bangladesh in 1974 focused his ideas on the need to enable its victims to grow more food; how he overcame the sceptics in many governments and among traditional economic thinking; and how he saw his micro-credit extended even outside the Third World into credit unions in the West. Such is the importance of his book that HRH the Prince of Wales has contributed a Foreword in which he hails 'a remarkable man [who] spoke the greatest good sense'.