POVERTYA DEEPER UNDERSTANDING

Lim Soong En, Kevin Wong, Yashver Shori, Joshua Tan

TITLE AND IMAGE OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Muhammad Yunus

INTRODUCTION TO MUHAMMAD YUNUS

Traditional banks did not want to make tiny loans at reasonable interest to the poor due to high risk of default.

But Muhammad Yunus believed that the poor would repay the money and hence microcredit was a viable business model.

Muhammad Yunus lent US$27 of his money to 42 women in the village, who made a profit of US$0.02 each on the loan.

Thus, Muhammad Yunus is credited with the idea of microcredit alongside Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan, founder of the Pakistan Academy for Rural Development (now Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development), whom the former greatly admired.

INTRODUCTION TO MUHAMMAD YUNUS

In December 1976, Yunus finally secured a loan from the government Janata Bank to lend to the poor in Jobra. The institution continued to operate, securing loans from other banks for its projects.

By 1982, it had 28,000 members.

On 1 October 1983, the pilot project began operation as a full-fledged bank for poor Bangladeshis and was renamed Grameen Bank

By July 2007, Grameen had issued US$6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers.

In the late 1980s, Grameen started to diversify by attending to underutilized fishing ponds and irrigation pumps like deep tube wells.

In 1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate organizations.

IMPACT OF MUHAMMAD YUNUS’S VENTURE

Muhammad Yunus developed the principles of the Grameen Bank (literally, "Bank of the Villages" in Bengali) from his research and experience. He began to expand microcredit as a research project together with the Rural Economics Project at Bangladesh's University of Chittagong to test his method for providing credit and banking services to the rural poor.

The Bank continues to expand across the nation. By 2006, Grameen Bank branches numbered over 2,100. Its success has inspired similar projects in more than 40 countries around the world, including a World Bank initiative to finance Grameen-type schemes.

IMPACT OF MUHAMMAD YUNUS’S VENTURE

The success of the Grameen microfinance model inspired similar efforts in about 100 developing countries and even in developed countries including the United States.

Muhammad Yunus demonstrated how Grameen Social Business Model can harness the entrepreneurial spirit to empower poor women and alleviate their poverty

One conclusion from Yunus' concepts is that the poor are like a “bonsai tree”, and they can do big things if they get access to the social business that holds potential to empower them to become self-sufficient.

CREDITS + TEAM NAMES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus

Team names: Lim Soong En

Kevin Wong

Yashver Shorri

Joshua Tan