PROSE 3 - Muhammad Yunus

SUMMARY

Early life:

Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 to a Muslim family in Hathazarai, Chittagong. In 1940, that was part of British-controlled India. But, after independence in 1947, became East Pakistan. (and later Bangladesh)

Yunus was an excellent student, becoming one of the best students in the year at Chittagong Collegiate School, and later Chittagong College. He completed a BA degree in economics at Dhaka University in 1960, and his MA in 1961.

After graduation, he taught economics at Chittagong College and served as a research assistant under Nurul Islam. In 1965 he gained a Fulbright scholarship to study in the UN. Later in 1971, he gained a PhD in economics from the Vanderbilt University Graduate Program in Economic Development. He also worked as an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University.

In 1970, he met Vera Forostenko a Russian immigrant to the US. They had one child, Monica Yunus, but Vera did not want to live in Bangladesh and the couple split. Yunus later married Afrozi Yunus, and they had one daughter Deena Afroz Yunus.

 Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi banker and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (2006). Yunus is credited with developing the concepts of microfinance and microcredit. These are schemes which offer small loans to the rural poor – to enable them to invest and lift themselves out of poverty.

“When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty.

Yunus decided to lend some of his own money to 42 women in the village of Jobra, near Chittagong. It was only a total of US$27, and he was repaid with a profit of $0.02 on each loan. This convinced him microloans were a viable business model.

Video Lecture Links:

https://youtu.be/9eNOyyky_GE

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