Expanding Dr. Yunus' Sphere of Influence

Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 along with his Grameen Bank for pioneering the concept of micro-finance in his native Bangladesh–a financial model that has now spread across much of the Third World and intrigued large segments of the business communities of the developed world as well.

In this interview with Forbes.com Executive Editor David A. Andelman, he talks about his vision of education and the role of family in his economic model as expressed in his new book– Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Public Affairs, 2007, 261 pages, $26.

Muhammad Yunus: We are creating a whole new generation out of (big, illiterate) families. The poverty was cycled, recycled, again and again, over ages. The cycle of poverty stops here.

While we give the loans to the women of Bangladesh, we also make sure they are encouraged to send their children to school, because these are all illiterate women. And we succeeded. We succeeded in sending almost 100% of the children of Grameen families to school.

Today they are moving up the levels in schools. We give them a scholarship for better performance. Last year, we gave 51,000 scholarships to the successful, brilliant students in the class. Then we started giving student loans because we see they are qualified to go into colleges, universities and so on. Now we have 21,000 students in medical schools, engineering schools, universities.

From now on, the new generation will take over. They will create their own world in a completely different way. That’s the way to get out of poverty, because otherwise it is just a little bit of difference in the poverty situation. It cannot sustain very long. Because one disaster comes like a flood, like a cyclone. You are pushed right back into your poverty, far deep into poverty. Again, it takes a lot of years to get out of it. (So I said,) we want to create a generation, which will take the families way above the poverty line, so that even if there is a big push coming from a disaster, it will not be pushed back beyond the poverty line.

Muhammad Yunus – Education Primes Third World: short video
http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/education/da_yunus012408&partner=contextual

Muhammad Yunus – Business Visionary: a short video
http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/special/da_visionary021408&partner=contextual