Microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh more than 25 years ago. Since then, millions of rural poor — mostly women — have received small loans for self-employment projects that have helped lift their families out of poverty. The bank’s model has been replicated in more than 100 countries, and microlending has become an important tool in the fight against global poverty. Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has worked with Yunus and the Grameen Bank on a number of initiatives linking the use of information and communication technologies to poverty reduction in rural Bangladesh.
Join the IDRC public lecture to hear Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus speak on "Microcredit and social business for a poverty-free world."
Muhammad Yunus is managing director of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank. A trained economist, he founded the bank in 1983 to promote the concept of microcredit—small, low-interest loans that can make a big difference in the lives of the poor and marginalized. His anti-poverty efforts were recognized in 2006 when he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the bank “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”
He serves as chair of the Yunus Centre and is a member of the United Nations Foundation. His books include Banker to the Poor, Creating a World Without Poverty, and Building Social Business.
Yunus is the recipient of the World Food Prize, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Bangladesh’s Independence Day Award. He will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws from Ottawa’s Carleton University on September 1, 2010.