Banker to the Poor: The Story of the Grameen Bank - Softcover

Yunus, Muhammad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854109243 ISBN 13: 9781854109248

Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

Muhammad Yunus set up the Grameen Bank in his home country of Bangladesh with a loan of just [pound]17, to lend tiny amounts of money to the poorest of the poor - those to whom no ordinary bank would lend. Most of his customers - as they still are - were illiterate women, wanting to set up the smallest imaginable village enterprises. It was his conviction that this new system of 'micro-credit', lending even such small sums, would give such people the spark of initiative needed to pull themselves out of poverty. Today, Yunus's system of micro-credit is practised around the world in some 60 countries, including the US, Canada and France. His Grameen Bank is now a billion-pound business. It is acknowledged by world leaders and by the World Bank to be a fundamental weapon in the fight against poverty. Banker to the Poor is Yunus's enthralling story of how he did it: how the terrible famine in Bangladesh in 1974 focused his ideas on the need to enable its victims to grow more food; how he overcame the sceptics in many governments and among traditional economic thinking; and how he saw his micro-credit extended even outside the Third World into credit unions in the West. Such is the importance of his book that HRH the Prince of Wales has contributed a Foreword in which he hails 'a remarkable man [who] spoke the greatest good sense'.

About this title

Review:

'An amazing account of the way in which one man with a vision and the right values can turn the established order on its ear' - John Elkington, Guardian; 'Not only does it read as swiftly as a thriller, it turns the dreary science of development economics inside out' - --Rosemary Righter, The Times

About the Author:

Muhammad Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, now in Bangladesh. In 1997 he led the world's first Micro-Credit Summit in Washington DC.

About this edition

• Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1854109243
• ISBN 13: 9781854109248
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 245