Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus to Speak in Malibu

By 1974, Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics at Chittagong University. One day, as he led his students on a field trip to a poor village, they met a woman who made bamboo stools and learned that after buying the raw bamboo and repaying the middleman, she was left with only a penny profit margin. Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above a subsistence level.

Realizing that there must be something terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his own hands and from his own pocket lent assistance to basket-weavers. He found that it was possible with a tiny amount not only to help them survive but also to create the spark of personal initiative and enterprise necessary to pull themselves out of poverty.

Against the advice of banks and government, Dr. Yunus continued to give out “micro-loans” and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank on principles of trust and solidarity. Today the bank has made a total of $6.44 billion in loans to 7.27 million borrowers and remains a model for microfinance institutions around the world.