Microcredit
12.10.2006 Greetings,
Helping people rise from poverty using microcredit has been Muhammad Yunus's project for the last 20 years.
An economist from Bangladesh, he accepted the 2006 Nobel prize yesterday. His vision enables poor rural people to take out a small loan; buy raw materials, a goat, a cell phone to rent out.
The idea has spread around the globe over the decades and is said to have helped more than 100 million people take their first steps to rise out of poverty.
Yunus said commercial banks may now have to rethink how they lend money, perhaps setting up special branches to provide microcredit.
Yunus said his half of the $1.4 million prize money would go toward setting up "a social enterprise" to provide low cost food to the poor.
"I have said it many thousand times before," Yunus told a news conference. "But when I screamed before, people hardly heard me because my voice didn't go very far. Today, with the Nobel Peace Prize, if I whisper the whole world hears me loud and clear."
Peace.
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