Nothing
F E At U r E
| YUNUS
1
F E At U r E 9.2
the role of the corporation in Supporting Local Development
BY MUhAMMAD YUNUS
At SoL’s Global Forum held in Oman last year, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, joined Roberto Bocca, director of emerging consumer markets at BP Alternative Energy; Lynne Dovey, director of strategic planning at the Ministry of Economic Development in New Zealand; Shaikh Saleh Al-Turki, the chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Omar Shaban, director of operations at Cisco NetVersity to look at the ways in which business can be modeled in order to help the poor. Muhammad Yunus related the story behind Grameen Bank and shared his concept of “social business.” Moderated by social researcher Laurent Marbacher, the panel also explored the idea of what human beings are capable of doing for local development, as well as how systems can enhance these capacities so that they can flourish.
Muhammad Yunus: was not thinking of creating a bank for poor people when the Grameen idea came to me. the idea had to do with the circumstances in which I found myself. I came back to Bangladesh in 1972, when it became an independent country. It was a devastated country, and I came back from the United States to participate in rebuilding the nation. I started teaching economics at chittagong University. As the economy slid down sharply, we had a terrible famine in 1974. I Muhammad Yunus was teaching elegant theories of economics while seeing people dying of hunger outside the classroom. I saw that what I was teaching meant nothing to those who were dying, and I thought that as a human being, I should see if I could be of some use. people were taking loans from loan sharks, and were getting exploited. I went around with a student to make a list of people who were borrowing from loan sharks. When my list was complete, we had 42 names, and the total loan was $27. I was shocked by the smallness of the
| YUNUS
1
F E At U r E 9.2
the role of the corporation in Supporting Local Development
BY MUhAMMAD YUNUS
At SoL’s Global Forum held in Oman last year, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, joined Roberto Bocca, director of emerging consumer markets at BP Alternative Energy; Lynne Dovey, director of strategic planning at the Ministry of Economic Development in New Zealand; Shaikh Saleh Al-Turki, the chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Omar Shaban, director of operations at Cisco NetVersity to look at the ways in which business can be modeled in order to help the poor. Muhammad Yunus related the story behind Grameen Bank and shared his concept of “social business.” Moderated by social researcher Laurent Marbacher, the panel also explored the idea of what human beings are capable of doing for local development, as well as how systems can enhance these capacities so that they can flourish.
Muhammad Yunus: was not thinking of creating a bank for poor people when the Grameen idea came to me. the idea had to do with the circumstances in which I found myself. I came back to Bangladesh in 1972, when it became an independent country. It was a devastated country, and I came back from the United States to participate in rebuilding the nation. I started teaching economics at chittagong University. As the economy slid down sharply, we had a terrible famine in 1974. I Muhammad Yunus was teaching elegant theories of economics while seeing people dying of hunger outside the classroom. I saw that what I was teaching meant nothing to those who were dying, and I thought that as a human being, I should see if I could be of some use. people were taking loans from loan sharks, and were getting exploited. I went around with a student to make a list of people who were borrowing from loan sharks. When my list was complete, we had 42 names, and the total loan was $27. I was shocked by the smallness of the