Micro Financing: Mohammed Yunus

Newsweek has been covering Grameen Bank extensively for the past decade... Here they are rightfully boasting their coverage about the bank, its founder and its pioneering work to help poor people out of poverty...

"From its humble beginnings more than 20 years ago as a new kind of lending institution that has made loans of as little as one dollar to poor people looking for simple ways-buying a cow, or some small farm equipment—to better their lives, the Grameen Banks of Bangladesh has become a major force in lifting people out of poverty. It’s not charity—the bank has been profitable in all but three years-but a lending revolution that has made a total of $5.72 billion in these “microcredit” loans. NEWSWEEK has been writing for years about Grameen and its founder, economist Mohammed Yunus, winners Friday of the Nobel Peace Prize. Below is some of our coverage:"

Read on ...

Here is a video about MicroFinancing from my professor Dr. Bhagwan Chowdhry... He discusses about how to make micro financing accessible to more down trodden villagers in poor countries like Bangladesh, India etc. He talks about the idea of "Village Money Lenders", with a different role than their notorious predecessors (who used to charge poor with an interest rate of 30-50% per day because of lack of collaterals) had. Money to these lenders (with reasonable collaterals) will be lended by bigger banks and these lenders will in turn lend smaller amounts to the poor people at a lower and reasonable interest rates...

Here is a BBC story about how poor peasants in India commit suicides because of huge debt...