Professor Yunus Visits Atlanta, Presents a New Capitalism
Recently Professor Yunus was in Atlanta, Where He Spoke about Social BusinessBy Mary Silver
Epoch Times Staff
ATLANTA-Muhammad Yunus was a professor of economics, but his academic knowledge had left him ignorant, he said at Atlanta University Center (AUC) on Aug. 27.
"I didn't know anything," he confessed, revealing that he hadn't realized the lives of the poor were completely controlled by loan sharks. "My textbook did not have a chapter about this."
In his native Bangladesh, Yunus had famously loaned $27 from his own pocket to a woman so that she could buy bamboo to weave mats to sell. They agreed that she would repay the loan in small weekly installments and Grameen Bank was born. Dr. Yunus's efforts with the Grameen Bank won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
Grameen means village, and Yunus designed the business model so that the bank would be owned and run by the lenders themselves. Yunus, the founder, is an employee.
The Grameen business model has now arrived in New York City's boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, where poor people are as troubled by loan sharks as they are in the villages of Bangladesh, Yunus explained. "I thought this was peculiar to Bangladesh, but it is global."
A bank will not allow a non-account holder to cash a check, but a check cashing storefront will-for a stiff fee. "You can't go to the bank with your $1,000 check and get $1,000. The bank says no. So you go to the payday lender."
New York currently has four Grameen banks. Their average loan is $1,500, no collateral required.
"We sent people from Bangladesh to New York City. They said, ‘We don't know anything about New York City.' I said, ‘Do it just the way you do it in Bangladesh. You already know everything. People are the same.'"
Grameen is unique because of the convenience they provide their customers. Bankers actually visit their clients at home, and no one has to stand in line. The bank doesn't even have forms or paperwork-an aspect that developed because the bank's first clients were illiterate.
Clients who make good on their loans become Grameen board members and make decisions. They also make friends, Yunus explains, "friends they had not had before. We have no lawyers. Sorry to the lawyers."
From the beginning Grameen has focused on providing their service to women-90 percent of the bank's client base. Yunus said women are most likely to use money they make to take care of their children.
Yunus explained that poor people have unlimited potential, just like everybody else, but they are not able to express it because of their restricted opportunities. "Poor people are bonsai people." Bonsai trees are normal, but kept in a small pot and pruned so they cannot reach normal size. Poverty is like the small pot that restricts the growth of a tree.
Social Business
Now the second generation of Grameen clients is coming of age, and graduating from college because their illiterate mothers were able to start businesses that pulled them out of poverty. Yunus says they ask him, "How can I find a job?"
He answers that new graduates should not seek employment, but try to create jobs for others, adding that creating a social business is the "best service you can give."
Yunus advises graduates to find a social problem they feel strongly about then try to find a way to solve it for four of five people.
He named several examples-selling affordable solar energy panels for rural areas, finding a cheap, flood-resistant building material for Bangladesh to replace tin or mud, and a women-run fortified yogurt business, a partner of Danone, which both supports employees and saves children from malnutrition.
"Often in the environmental field there is a sense that economics and business is against our cause. This gives me a new outlook," said Wellesley exchange student Whitney Smith, who is majoring in environmental studies.
Spelman English major Deaundra Jackson also took Dr. Yunus's words to heart. "I've been very concerned about young girls. If I could implement a program to be with them, give them support all the way up to college," she said that would be her social business.
Dr. Yunus's new book Building Social Business, The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs, is dedicated "to all those who are ready to dedicate themselves to change the world."
