Nobel Winner to Use Prize to Help Poor (1 Viewer)

[RightinNYC]

Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus on Friday called the award "great news" for his homeland, where his microcredit finance programs have helped improve the lives of millions of poor people.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the award for advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, especially women, through their pioneering microcredit work.

The 65-year-old economist said he would use part of his share of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award money to create a company that would make low-cost, high-nutrition food for the poor. The rest of his share would go toward setting up an eye hospital for the poor in Bangladesh, he told reporters.

Yunus' Grameen Bank was the first lender to hand out microcredit, giving very small loans to poor Bangladeshis, most of them women, who did not qualify for loans from conventional banks. No collateral is needed and repayment is based on an honor system.

Loans average about $200 and go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg business, or cell phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay a small fee to make calls.

According to the bank, interest ranges from zero percent for loans to beggars to 5 percent for student loans, 8 percent for home loans and 20 percent for loans to businesses that generate income.

Anyone can qualify for a loan, but recipients are put in groups of five and once two members of the group have borrowed money, the other three must wait for the funds to be repaid before they get a loan.

Grameen, which means rural in the Bengali language, says the method encourages social responsibility. The results are hard to argue with -- the bank says it has a 99 percent repayment rate.

What a great story. This guy's idea was absolutely genius, while being so simple. If you read the story, you'll get a great example of how well it works. Simply an amazing guy.

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

What a great story. This guy's idea was absolutely genius, while being so simple. If you read the story, you'll get a great example of how well it works. Simply an amazing guy.

Finally someone wins who deserves it.

 

[jujuman13]

TOT, you do surprise me, it appears you DO have some semblance of humanity in you after all.

I concur, this man and the Bank he created fully deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is a great pity that these idea's are not used with relation to Government loans or aid given to other countries, it seems that an honour system or other countries needing aid putting pressure on those countries that have received aid might work better than simply allowing the crooked politicians in those countries that HAVE received aid, syphoning off that aid to their own personal secret Bank accounts may well work.

It may be time to put this type of aid in perspective.

 

[RightinNYC]

TOT, you do surprise me, it appears you DO have some semblance of humanity in you after all.

This was rather unnecessary, I think.

It is a great pity that these idea's are not used with relation to Government loans or aid given to other countries, it seems that an honour system or other countries needing aid putting pressure on those countries that have received aid might work better than simply allowing the crooked politicians in those countries that HAVE received aid, syphoning off that aid to their own personal secret Bank accounts may well work.

It may be time to put this type of aid in perspective.

Two of the main reasons for this program's outstanding success were the fact that the loans were generally very minor amounts, and the fact that it relied highly on a well developed sense of social obligation and community need.

In situations where foreign aid is being offered, the money in question is in much greater amounts and the sense of obligation to a foreign power is much weaker than the obligation that one has to their family, friends, and community.

It's a great program, and it might even work if we worked to finance the creation of similar programs within individual nations that maintain strong community ties, but I'm not sure of its potential efficacy if it were to replace foreign aid in the traditional sense.

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

TOT, you do surprise me, it appears you DO have some semblance of humanity in you after all.

Not particularly to have humanity one would have to be human I on the other hand have existed from the morning of the world and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Trajan Octavian Titus, I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a God. So I wouldn't call it humanity persay more like . . . more like pity. It's a vice not a virtue and I'm working hard to overcome it.

It is a great pity that these idea's are not used with relation to Government loans or aid given to other countries, it seems that an honour system or other countries needing aid putting pressure on those countries that have received aid might work better than simply allowing the crooked politicians in those countries that HAVE received aid, syphoning off that aid to their own personal secret Bank accounts may well work.

It may be time to put this type of aid in perspective.

An international welfare program? Great idea. :roll:

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

Ya that last one was kind of ****ed up if anyone doesn't know I was kidding, I use Aristotle's Golden Mean from Nicomachean Ethics, and allthough I'm agnostic I still substitute the sharp knife virtues and vices of the Greeks and use the Christian ideas of vice and Virtue instead.