Monday 8 February 2010

Mohamed Yunus, editor in chief for a day


Interview de Muhammad Yunus
Uploaded by liberation. - News videos from around the world.

Nobel peace prize of 2006, Mohamed Yunus is an advocate of social business, micro-credit as way to alleviate poverty. He was invited by "Liberation", a french daily newspaper, to be their editor in chief for a day.
The exercise is quite innovative: to invite someone to interact within a media company responsible for providing reliable information. It is also a way to give another angle to the usual thought process.
He was interviewed on his views of the microcredit process and he talks among many issues about future generations.
He founded Grameen bank, in Bangladesh, in the mid 70's, as a way to break the cycle of shark lenders who charged abominable rates to the poor putting them in an never breaking debt series. He started with small amount of money, and build a system around collaboration, proximity, trust, empowerment. He found women more reliable to repay their loans. He helped many in his country and around the world as his model was reproduced everywhere, even today in the western world such as in the US or in France.
His main critics believe that the only thing he promotes is capitalism as the only way out of misery.
But his conviction in helping others has made him a man of action, opening the eyes to the underworld of poverty. Traditional banking can no longer only focus on profit for high net worth individuals. It is time that all those who access capital, such as countries in the Gulf, to share with smaller financial institutions their knowledge and capacity in this struggle.

Grameen Bank link
Liberation link

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