Muhammad Yunus talks about Grameen Foundation

Microfinance pioneer and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus talks about the beginnings of Grameen Foundation, and the value of the work we do today strengthening the microfinance sector and providing mobile phone-based solutions to the world's poorest. Here is the transcript of the video:

Let me say a few words about Grameen Foundation. It started in a very humble way, way back -- 14 years back -- with a very small amount of money. [Grameen Foundation President and CEO] Alex Counts was in Bangladesh. He wanted to study Grameen Bank, and he spent a lot of time in Bangladesh to do that. He had observed all of the ideas and philosophy of Grameen Bank, and methodology of Grameen Bank, and came back to USA and then took the responsibility of becoming the president of this tiny little foundation, which began its work.

Under his leadership, Grameen Foundation spread in many directions around the world. He made a lot of people aware of the importance of microfinance. Many friends came around and supported Grameen Foundation. As a result, Grameen Foundation has become very successful in finding this money to go to poor women around the world. Today it's a global organization, helping many poor women around the world with financial services through the NGOs, through the MFIs.

Not only has it provided funding, it came also with innovative ideas. Grameen Foundation introduced the idea of guaranteeing loans, rather than giving the money itself. They started giving guarantees to a local bank, which would be giving loans to a local MFI. As a result, the same money could be leveraged to give more money to the poor people. At the same time, local banks got used to providing financing to local organizations for microfinance.

Also, Grameen Foundation paid attention to technology. It set up Grameen [Foundation] Technology Center to promote technological solutions to facilitate providing microcredit. It came up with mobile technology, popularizing mobile technology to microfinance and helping microfinance through mobile technology. It came up with software for microfinance operations.

So, in many ways, they tried to bring another dimension to microfinance. It has done excellent work. I wish all the success to Grameen Foundation, and thank you very much for your support.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

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• Muhammad Yunus
• Yunus
• Grameen
• Grameen Foundation
• Grameen Bank
• poverty
• technology
• mobile phone
• applications
• poor

[nellie2581]

Congrats Yunus and the Grameen Foundation