This was an excellent book and one I would highly recommend . In Muhammad Yunus's own words:
I have always believed that the elimination of p... (show more)
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 Bangl... (show more)
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. (show less)
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This was an excellent book and one I would highly recommend . In Muhammad Yunus's own words:
I have always believed that the elimination of p... (show more)
This was an excellent book and one I would highly recommend . In Muhammad Yunus's own words:
I have always believed that the elimination of poverty from the world is a matter of will. Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor.
When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding a solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution for poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the iniative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences. (show less)
Wonderful concept, amazing achievments against many odds, a true contributor to emmulate... was surprised how ego-centric the tone of this book was... (show more)
Wonderful concept, amazing achievments against many odds, a true contributor to emmulate... was surprised how ego-centric the tone of this book was, however, given what this man has done with his life, maybe it was just the writing style and the fact that he was writing in a non-native language. (show less)
The remarkable story of a remarkable person who decided to change the world and set out and did just that.
Yunus wrote the book before receiving his Nobel, and judging from his moderately self-aggrandizing style, it takes more than a bit of self-promotion to beat out everyone else in the world for the prize -- though it's not excessive or a major distraction from the story. The asides on basic economic theory were instructive.
There is something ironic, though, in the fact that the vas... (show more)
The remarkable story of a remarkable person who decided to change the world and set out and did just that.
Yunus wrote the book before receiving his Nobel, and judging from his moderately self-aggrandizing style, it takes more than a bit of self-promotion to beat out everyone else in the world for the prize -- though it's not excessive or a major distraction from the story. The asides on basic economic theory were instructive.
There is something ironic, though, in the fact that the vast majority of his readers are probably educated middle-class first-worlders, and thus very removed from both the rock-bottom destitute people that have benefited from Grameen, and the rarified elite world (Fulbright scholar Ph.D, and lots and lots of connections in the Bangladeshi government) that Yunus was part of and without which he could never have made his vision come true. (show less)
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Muhammad Yunus, Superman.
I was stunned to read about the challenges that Yunus and his colleagues had to surmount to make microcredit successful in his native Bangladesh. The greatest of which in my opinion were the cultural oppression of women, the frequency and severity of natural disasters, and the violent chaos in some regions of the country. That Grameen was able to overcome these -- not to mention many other obstacles (e.g. bureaucratic inertia, resistance of elites and vested int... (show more)
Muhammad Yunus, Superman.
I was stunned to read about the challenges that Yunus and his colleagues had to surmount to make microcredit successful in his native Bangladesh. The greatest of which in my opinion were the cultural oppression of women, the frequency and severity of natural disasters, and the violent chaos in some regions of the country. That Grameen was able to overcome these -- not to mention many other obstacles (e.g. bureaucratic inertia, resistance of elites and vested interests, etc.) -- is humbling and inspiring at the same time.
Yunus writes clearly and simply, and while more results-oriented readers might want a more detailed analysis of the impact of microcredit in the countries where it has been used, for an introduction to the concept and an outline of its history and founder, this book does the job nicely. (show less)
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