Background

Muhammad Yunus was born on June 28, 1940, the third of nine children, in Chittagong, Bangladesh. His father was Haji Muhammad Dula Mia Shawdagar, a jeweler, and his mother was Sofia Khatun.

Education

In 1944, Yunus's family moved to the city of Chittagong, and there Muhammad Yunus attended Lamabazar Primary School. Later, he passed the matriculation examination from Chittagong Collegiate School. During his school years, he was an active Boy Scout, and traveled to West Pakistan and India in 1952, to Europe, the United States, and Canada in 1955, and to the Philippines and Japan in 1959, to attend Jamborees. In 1957, he enrolled in the Department of Economics at Dhaka University and completed his Bachelor of Artes in 1960 and Master of Arts in 1961.

Following his graduation, Yunus joined the Bureau of Economics, Dhaka University. In 1965, he was offered a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in economics from Vanderbilt University in the United States in 1969. From 1969 to 1972, he was an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.

Career

During the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, Yunus founded a Citizen's Committee in Nashville, Tennessee, published a newsletter named Bangladesh Newsletter, and ran the Bangladesh Information Center in Washington, D.C. with other Bangladeshis living in the United States, to raise support for the liberation of East Pakistan and lobby at the United States Congress to stop military aid to Pakistan.

Inspired by the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, Yunus returned to that country in 1972 and joined the Economics Department of the University of Chittagong after a brief spell in the Planning Commission. He became actively involved with poverty reduction after observing the famine of 1974 and established the Rural Economics Programme as part of the department's academic programme. In 1975, he organized Nabajug (New Era) Tebhaga Khamar (three share farm), which the government later adopted as the Packaged Input Programme. In 1976, during visits to very poor households in the village of Jobra near Chittagong University, Yunus discovered that very small loans could make an enormous difference to a poor person's life. Jobra women who made bamboo furniture had to take out loans at usurious rates for buying bamboo and had to give up their profits to the moneylenders.

Shocked by this reality, he lent $27.00 from his own pocket to 42 people in the village to help them pay back their loans to the loan sharks and be free. When he approached traditional banks to lend to the poor, he found that they were not interested as the poor were not considered creditworthy.

Yunus strongly believed that, given the chance, the poor would repay the borrowed money, and that it would help them work their way out of poverty. After many efforts, he finally succeeded in securing a credit line from Janata Bank, offering himself as the guarantor, for his project to lend to the poor in Jobra in December 1976. On October 2, 1983, the project was converted into a fully-fledged bank named Grameen Bank (Village Bank), specializing in making small loans to the poor.

As of May 2008, Grameen Bank (GB) has 7.5-million borrowers, 97% of whom are women. With 2 515 branches, GB provides services in 82 072 villages, covering more than 97% of the villages in Bangladesh. It has lent over $7-billion to poor people since its inception and the repayment rate has been near 100%. All its money comes from the depositors of the bank.

Yunus has also founded a number of companies in Bangladesh to address diverse issues of poverty and development. These include Grameen Phone (a mobile telephone company), Grameen Shakti (an energy company), Grameen Fund (a social venture capital company), Grameen Textile, Grameen Knitwear, Grameen Education, Grameen Agriculture, Grameen Fisheries and Livestock, Grameen Business Promotion, Grameen Danone Foods Ltd., and Grameen Healthcare Services.

He is also the founder of Grameen Trust, which extends the Grameen microcredit system all over the world. In October 2006, Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Grameen Bank, for their efforts to create economic and social development.

Achievements

• Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
  
  In 2006 Yunus and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Prize for Peace. He has won a number of other awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize, and the Sydney Peace Prize. Within Bangladesh, he has received the President’s Award (1978), Central Bank Award (1985), and Independence Day Award (1987), the highest national award. The Bangladesh government brought out a commemorative stamp to honor his Nobel award. Yunus was inducted as a member of the Legion d'Honneur by President Chirac of France. In January 2008, Houston, Texas declared January 14 as Muhammad Yunus Day.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism

    (In Muhammad Yunus' groundbreaking sequel to Banker to the...)

    1998
  • Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

    (The inspirational story of how Nobel Prize winner Muhamma...)

    1998
  • Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs

    (In Building Social Business, Yunus shows how social busin...)

    2010
  • A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions

    (In A World of Three Zeros, Yunus describes the new civili...)

    2017
  • Banker to the Poor: The Story of the Grameen Bank 1998

Religion

Muhammad Yunus is a very devout Muslim.

Politics

In February 2007 Yunus entered the Bangladeshi political arena by forming a political party, Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power), and announcing his intention to contest the upcoming election. His announcement came during a state of emergency and severe conflict between the country's two major parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh National Party. Yunus promised his movement would seek to restore good governance and eliminate corruption. In May 2007, however, Yunus dropped his efforts to establish the party, citing a lack of support.

Views

Since 2006 Professor Yunus has focused on spreading and implementing the concept of Social Business - a business model that aims to solve social problems while staying financially self-sustainable. To date, there are more than 50 Social Businesses in operation in Bangladesh alone - some are the largest companies in the region.

Quotations: "Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away."

Membership

Muhammad Yunus is a member of the board of the United Nations Foundation and one of the founding members of the Global Elders, chaired by Nelson Mandela.

• 

  United Nations Foundation

• Global Elders

Personality

Yunus has a great facility with words and is a compelling storyteller and phrasemaker.

Interests

• Photography, drawing, painting, graphic design

• Politicians

  Gandhi

Connections

In 1967, while Yunus attended Vanderbilt University, he met a Russian student named Vera Forostenko. The couple married in 1971. They had a daughter, Monica Yunus, who became an opera soprano. In 1979 the marriage ended in divorce.

In 1980 he would marry again, this time to fellow Bangladeshi Afroji Yunus, a physics professor. Their daughter Deena Afroz Yunus was born in 1986.

Father:

Haji Muhammad Dula Mia Shawdagar

Mother:

Sofia Khatun

Spouse:

Afroji Yunus

(married 1980)

ex-spouse:

Vera Forostenko

(married 1971 - divorced 1979)

Daughter:

Monica Yunus

(born 1979)

Daughter:

Deena Afroz Yunus

(born 1986)

References

• Twenty-Two Cents: Muhammad Yunus and the Village Bank by Paula Yoo
  2014
• Twenty-Seven Dollars and a Dream: How Muhammad Yunus Changed the World and What It Cost Him by Katharine Esty
  2013