Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Grameen Bank founder named among 'Real Heroes'

Sukhjit Purewal in San Jose

Martin Luther King is his hero. But now Muhammad Yunus, known as the banker to the poor, has himself attained that glorious appellation.

Yunus, who changed lives of the poor forever by founding the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, was included by US News & World Report magazine in a list of 'Real Heroes'. In the magazine's August 20 edition, it profiles 20 men and women who 'serve as a calling to our higher selves'.

On the list are well-known and admired figures, including Senator John McCain, a POW during the Vietnam War; Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white played an integral role in the civil rights movement; and boxer Muhammad Ali.

Others on the list include Major Rhonda Corrum, a POW of the Iraqi War, who refused to divulge classified information even when she was sexually assaulted by her captors.

Mother Teresa, who moves closer to sainthood, is placed fifth on a separate list of heroes that the magazine compiled from an interactive poll conducted in 1,022 households.

Ahead of her were Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King Jr, Colin Powell and John F Kennedy.

Mother Teresa was the primary choice for women who participated in the poll.

US News's tribute to Yunus appears along with the other heroes characterised as 'Crusaders for Justice'.

Yunus, started the system of micro-credit loans to the poor when he went returned home to Bangladesh in the 1970s.

During a visit to the village of Jobra, near his home of Chittagong, Yunus met a woman who told him she earned only two cents a day making bamboo stools because it cost her more for the supplies. Yunus loaned $27 to 42 villagers, who were hopelessly in debt and unable to make enough money from their crafts to make a profit. Each paid him back.

When he turned to banks for more money to expand the programme, as the story goes -- he was flatly denied.

"The more stubborn the government and commercial bankers would get with me," Yunus told the magazine, "the more stubbornly I pushed the idea."

Even without loans, Yunus expanded the programme on his own and founded the Grameen Bank in 1983.

The bank has given out $3 billion to over 2 million Bangladeshi borrowers, according to the story. And what's more, today there are 7,000 micro-finance organisations globally, according to the story.

Yunus, a Muslim, was born in 1940 in Chittagong and attended Chittagong University. He left for the US in 1960 and earned his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University on a Fullbright Scholarship before becoming a professor there.

He told the magazine that his most powerful memory was when he left Bangladesh for the first time as a youth to attend the Boy Scout's World Jamboree and his happiest moments are visiting the villages that Grameen helps.

About his hero Martin Luther King, Yunus remarked, "I respected how he stood up to government. In Bangladesh too, often, the government does nothing. You have to work outside the government to make a difference."

Money
Business News

Tell us what you think of this report