The reply:
www.grameenfoundation.org
Take action to fight world poverty
Thank you for sending a message of congratulation to Muhammad Yunus.
Here's what else you can do to help fight poverty with microfinance:
* Send free e-cards to at least five friends. Share a revealing story of how microfinance helped a women move her family away from severe poverty. * Write a letter to the editor. Download a sample letter to the editor (Word format). By submitting letters to the editors of local newspapers, supporters can teach others about microfinance. * Submit a newsletter article to your company, club, school, neighborhood, or religious newsletter about microfinance. * Do a brown bag at work. Gather your coworkers around an office computer to have lunch while they view short, compelling videos on microfinance and Professor Yunus (see the list at right). * RESULTS: House Gatherings. They are easy and fun. Download a packet on how to throw a small get together to celebrate Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank, and take action to defeat poverty. * RESULTS: Write letters and make things happen. Send a letter to the editor about directing USAID to increase microfinance efforts, as well as a letter to your Senators urging them to press USAID and the World Bank to do more to support microfinance.
Tell us what you're doing to fight poverty. If you write letters to the editor, hold a house gathering, or take other actions, please send us a note at action at grameenfoundation.org.
Learn more, teach others
Visit these websites to learn more, then spread the word about how microfinance can change the world.
* Grameen Bank of Bangladesh: Read the incredible story of how they empowered over six million poor people with microfinance. * Muhammad Yunus website: Hear about the extraordinary journey of Muhammad Yunus from his life as an economics professor to a Nobel Peace Prize winner. * Microcredit Summit Campaign: Join one of the Microcredit Summit Campaign's 16 Councils and express your commitment to the Campaign's goals to ensure 175 million families receive microcredit and that 100 million families move out of extreme poverty by 2015. * Read The State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report to learn how microfinance has reached over 100 million of the world's poor and helped them launch their journeys out of poverty.
In his own words
Learn more about Muhammad Yunus and microfinance in his book, Banker to the Poor, now #23 on the New York Times best seller list. For other publications about poverty and microfinance, please visit our Books and Publications section.
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Nobel laureate: Poverty fight essential
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 47 minutes ago
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday, saying he hoped the award would inspire "bold initiatives" to fight poverty and eradicate the root causes of terrorism. ADVERTISEMENT
Yunus, 66, shared the award with his Grameen Bank for helping people rise above poverty by giving them microcredit — small, usually unsecured loans.
"I firmly believe that we can create a poverty free world if we collectively believe in it," Yunus said after accepting the prize at City Hall in Oslo, Norway. "The only place you would be able to see poverty is in a poverty museum."
The Nobel Prizes, announced in October, are always presented in Oslo and Stockholm, Sweden, on Dec. 10 to mark the anniversary of the 1896 death of their creator, Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite and stipulated the dual ceremonies in his will.
The winners for literature, medicine, physics and economics will receive their awards later Sunday at a royal ceremony in Stockholm's blue-hued concert hall. Each award carries a purse of $1.4 million, a diploma and a gold medal. The first prizes were handed out in 1901.
This year's laureates include a novelist who explored Turkey's clash of cultures and American scientists who helped cement the big-bang theory of the universe and broke new ground in genetic research.
Yunus said ending poverty was the best way to fight terrorism.
"We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time," he said. "I believe putting resources into improving the lives of poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns."
Grameen Bank, set up in 1983, was the first lender to provide microcredit, giving very small loans to poor Bangladeshis who did not qualify for loans from conventional banks. No collateral is needed, and repayment is based on an honor system, with a nearly 100 percent repayment rate.
Yunus said the idea has spread around the world, with similar programs in almost every country.
Clad in a traditional Bangladeshi sleeveless jacket, Yunus accepted his half of the $1.4 million prize from awards committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes.
Board member Mosammat Taslima Begum, wearing a traditional dress in red with a green shawl, accepted the other half of the award on behalf of Grameen bank, saying she dedicated it to all Bangladeshis.
Mjoes said the award was an outstretched hand to the Islamic world in an era where Muslims are often demonized because of terrorism.
"The peace prize to Yunus and Grameen Bank is also support for the Muslim country of Bangladesh, and for the Muslim environments in the world that are working for dialogue and collaboration," Mjoes said
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Microcredit Evangelism, Health and Social Policy
by Patrick Bond
Forthcoming in the International Journal of Health Services, 2007
Abstract The awarding of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, provides an opportunity to consider the use and abuse of microfinancing, especially because credit continues to be touted as a poverty-reduction strategy associated with health education and healthcare financing strategies. Not only is the Grameen diagnosis of poverty dubious, many structural problems also plague the model, ranging from financial accounting to market failures. In Southern Africa, to illustrate, microcredit schemes for peasants and small farmers have been attempted for more than 70 years, on the basis that modern capitalism and peasant/informal system gaps can be bridged by an expanded financial system. The results have been disappointing. Instead, a critical reading of political economy posits an organic linkage between the ‘developed’ and ‘underdeveloped’ economies which is typically not mitigated by capitalist financial markets, but instead often exacerbated. When applied to health and social policy, microcredit evangelism becomes especially dangerous.
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