Muhammad Yunus Founder and Managing Director, Grameen Bank

Muhammad Yunus has risen to international prominence on the simple premise that, given access to credit, the impoverished people of the world can significantly improve their economic status. As the founder and Managing Director of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Yunus has transformed traditional notions of economic development assistance and broadly influenced and expanded the micro-credit industry. His model is now being replicated in numerous developing countries around the world.

As a professor of economics in Bangladesh, Yunus was astonished to come across women in local villages earning only pennies a day, simply because they were unable to purchase the materials they needed to work independently. With the assistance of his graduate students, Yunus arranged to provide the necessary capital  a total of $26  to 42 such women to enable them to start micro-enterprise programs utilizing their own trade and craft skills. From these humble beginnings eighteen years ago, the Grameen Bank has grown to over 1,050 branches that serve two million customers. And, defying its conservative-minded skeptics, Grameen has achieved a 97 percent rate of repayment. 

The fundamental principle behind the Grameen Bank is Yunus' firm belief that credit is a human right. Exasperated by conventional banking policy that limits credit to those who can provide collateral, Yunus established Grameen with the intent of providing credit to those least able to obtain it. It is, in fact, an eligibility requirement that its loan recipients be landless and, not surprisingly, 94 percent of Grameen's customers are women. As Yunus explains, "When a woman brings in income, the immediate beneficiaries are her children."

In this manner, Grameen represents much more than a financial insititution. It is, in Yunus' words a "socially conscious capitalist enterprise." Borrowers are organized into mutually supportive and self-policing groups of five or more, and must undergo training in social development issues such as birth control, education, sanitation and respect for the environment. Yunus further adds that "credit, being one of the most powerful assets, can, if dispensed properly and if made accessible to the needy people at appropriate terms, help people change their destinies." As a result of the successful implementation of his ideas and the expanding scope of this model, there is increasing discussion of Yunus as a potential Nobel Prize recipient.