Sometimes the News isn't depressing
By Tom Hundley, Tribune foreign correspondent. Tribune news services contributed to this report
Published October 14, 2006
LONDON -- It would have been more charitable--and certainly a lot easier--just to give the poor woman the money. But instead, Muhammad Yunus lent her $27.
"Charity is not the answer to poverty," Yunus wrote earlier this year. "It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away the individual's initiative to break through the wall of poverty."
The woman and several of her friends used the small loan to start a successful furniture-making business and to escape the bonds of poverty in their rural Bangladeshi village. They repaid the loan in full.
Thirty years and more than $5.7 billion in loans later, Yunus' insight into the nature of poverty and the spirit of entrepreneurship has earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Read the rest
Published October 14, 2006
LONDON -- It would have been more charitable--and certainly a lot easier--just to give the poor woman the money. But instead, Muhammad Yunus lent her $27.
"Charity is not the answer to poverty," Yunus wrote earlier this year. "It only helps poverty to continue. It creates dependency and takes away the individual's initiative to break through the wall of poverty."
The woman and several of her friends used the small loan to start a successful furniture-making business and to escape the bonds of poverty in their rural Bangladeshi village. They repaid the loan in full.
Thirty years and more than $5.7 billion in loans later, Yunus' insight into the nature of poverty and the spirit of entrepreneurship has earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Read the rest
posted by Fraggle @ 7:55 PM
1 Comments:
At 17:03,
Brody said…
I've been reading about Yunus all week. I love it!! I wish America could follow suit with international aid in this way or even to help our people who are living below the poverty line in America.
Complaints about this type of lending include: that they only lend to people who plan on making money with it, they are overly involved with the people which increases overhead, this overhead causes them to charge 20% interest to make money. However, Yunus says the obstacle for these people isn't the interest rate, but the lack of being able to get credit at all except from loan sharks.
Yeah, yeah! -Brody
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