ZOOM IN Nobel Laureate Touts the Virtues of Microlending Muhammad Yunus encourages students to develop social businesses By Alejandra Navarro
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12 | QUINNIPIAC MAGAZINE | SPRING 2013
Muhammad Yunus envisions a world without unemployment.
Mark Stanczak
hile teaching economics at Chittagong University in Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus invested $27 to help 42 neighboring villagers repay their debts to loan sharks. He wanted to unburden them from the 500- to 1,000-percent interest rates charged. “If you can make so many people so happy with such a small amount of money, why don’t you do more?” he asked himself. This act of kindness kindled the idea to give the poor and unemployed small loans—now called microlending—to start small businesses, which traditional banks would not do for people with no collateral or credit history. Not only did his neighbors avoid exploitation by payday lenders, many climbed out of poverty. Yunus, author of “Banker to the Poor” and “Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism,” shared his story at Quinnipiac in March. He spent a day participating in panel discussions, speaking with students and giving a public lecture. Since his first loans in 1976, some just a few dollars, millions of people around the world have benefited from microlending, which has become popular in many impoverished regions. When he could not find banks to give loans to the poor, he founded Grameen Bank. Today, the bank has 8.5 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women. “Poverty is not created by poor people. Poverty is imposed on them,” Yunus explained. Looking out at the students filling Burt Kahn Court, he said, “Poverty is created by the system we created. We made the system, we can change the system.” He described the bankers who scoffed at the idea of lending to the poor, saying they would not pay back the loans. “You lend money in such a peculiar way,”