Prof. Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank

We studied a great personality in the class. All of us had watched the YouTube video of speech delivered by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Yunus, and we discussed it in detail. Here is the video for your reference - 

So, I will start with a brief introduction of this great Nobel laureate and his extraordinary concept of Grameen Bank. Muhammad Yunus earned a doctorate in economics from Vanderbilt University in the United States. He was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974 to make a small loan of US$27 to a group of 42 families as start-up money so that they could make items for sale, without the burdens of high interest under predatory lending. And this is how the concept of Grameen Bank was conceived.

 

The video is of a speech delivered by him at the Emory university and it tells us how this concept originated, how it was implemented and how it has been transforming millions of lives worldwide. 

So, we started the discussion with the differences between the grameen and the conventional banks. The points that we discussed were based on the following list:

 

Key differences between Grameen Bank and Conventional Bank

 

 The key learnings from this class were how a person motivated to bring about change in the society can work in a field he/she is completely unknown with. It is an inspirational example indeed. 



Another takeway is the clarity of objective. Since the Grameen Bank had clear objectives of bringing people out of abject poverty, it chose an altogether different path than the conventional banks. And the success behind this great initiative can be attributed to the vision that Prof. Muhammad Yunus had and the efforts that were in line with his vision.