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More broadly, it is a movement whose object is "a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers." Those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty.
Microfinance is a broad category of services, which include microcredit. Microcredit can be defined as the provision of credit services to poor clients. Although microcredit by definition can achieve only a small portion of the goals of microfinance, conflation of the two terms is endemic in public discourse. In other words, critics attack microcredit while referring to it indiscriminately as either 'microcredit' or 'microfinance'. Due to the broad range of microfinance services, it is difficult to assess impact, and no studies to date have done so.
In addition, most poor people have few assets that can be secured by a bank as collateral. As documented extensively by Hernando de Soto and others, even if they happen to own land in the developing world, they may not have effective title to it. This means that the bank will have little recourse against defaulting borrowers.
Seen from a broader perspective, the development of a healthy national financial system has long been viewed as a catalyst for the broader goal of national economic development (see for example Alexander Gerschenkron, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, Joseph Schumpeter, Anne Krueger ). However, the efforts of national planners and experts to develop financial services for most people have often failed in developing countries, for reasons summarized well by Adams, Graham & Von Pischke in their classic analysis 'Undermining Rural Development with Cheap Credit'.
Because of these difficulties, when poor people borrow they often rely on relatives or a local moneylender, whose interest rates can be very high. An analysis of 28 studies of informal moneylending rates in 14 countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa concluded that 76% of moneylender rates exceed 10% per month, including 22% that exceeded 100% per month. Moneylenders usually charge higher rates to poorer borrowers than to less poor ones. While moneylenders are often demonized and accused of usury, their services are convenient and fast, and they can be very flexible when borrowers run into problems. Hopes of quickly putting them out of business have proven unrealistic, even in places where microfinance institutions are active.
Over the past centuries practical visionaries, from the Franciscan monks who founded the community-oriented pawnshops of the 15th century, to the founders of the European credit union movement in the 19th century (such as Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen) and the founders of the microcredit movement in the 1970s (such as Muhammad Yunus) have tested practices and built institutions designed to bring the kinds of opportunities and risk-management tools that financial services can provide to the doorsteps of poor people. While the success of the Grameen Bank (which now serves over 7 million poor Bangladeshi women) has inspired the world, it has proved difficult to replicate this success. In nations with lower population densities, meeting the operating costs of a retail branch by serving nearby customers has proven considerably more challenging. Hans Dieter Seibel, board member of the European Microfinance Platform, is in favour of the group model. This particular model (used by many Microfinance institutions) makes financial sense, he says, because it reduces transaction costs. Microfinance programmes also need to be based on local funds. Local Roots
Although much progress has been made, the problem has not been solved yet, and the overwhelming majority of people who earn less than $1 a day, especially in the rural areas, continue to have no practical access to formal sector finance. Microfinance has been growing rapidly with $25 billion currently at work in microfinance loans. It is estimated that the industry needs $250 billion to get capital to all the poor people who need it.
Some principles that summarize a century and a half of development practice were encapsulated in 2004 by Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) and endorsed by the Group of Eight leaders at the G8 Summit on June 10, 2004: Subsidies from donors and government are scarce and uncertain, and so to reach large numbers of poor people, microfinance must pay for itself. #Microfinance means building permanent local institutions. #Microfinance also means integrating the financial needs of poor people into a country's mainstream financial system. #"The job of government is to enable financial services, not to provide them." #"Donor funds should complement private capital, not compete with it." The more recent focus on inclusive financial systems (see section below) affords moneylenders more legitimacy, arguing in favour of regulation and efforts to increase competition between them to expand the options available to poor people.
Modern microfinance emerged in the 1970s with a strong orientation towards private-sector solutions. This resulted from evidence that state-owned agricultural development banks in developing countries had been a monumental failure, actually undermining the development goals they were intended to serve (see the compilation edited by Adams, Graham & Von Pischke). Although it is generally agreed that microfinance practitioners should seek to balance these goals to some extent, there are a wide variety of strategies, ranging from the minimalist profit-orientation of BancoSol in Bolivia to the highly integrated not-for-profit orientation of BRAC in Bangladesh. This is true not only for individual institutions, but also for governments engaged in developing national microfinance systems.
Microfinance experts generally agree that women should be the primary focus of service delivery. Evidence shows that they are less likely to default on their loans than men. Industry data from 2006 for 704 MFIs reaching 52 million borrowers includes MFIs using the solidarity lending methodology (99.3% female clients) and MFIs using individual lending (51% female clients). The delinquency rate for solidarity lending was 0.9% after 30 days (individual lending—3.1%), while 0.3% of loans were written off (individual lending—0.9%). Because operating margins become tighter the smaller the loans delivered, many MFIs consider the risk of lending to men to be too high. This focus on women is questioned sometimes, however. A recent study of microenterpreneurs from Sri Lanka published by the World Bank found that the return on capital for male-owned businesses (half of the sample) averaged 11%, whereas the return for women-owned businesses was 0% or slightly negative.
Microfinancial services may be needed everywhere, including the developed world. However, in developed economies intense competition within the financial sector, combined with a diverse mix of different types of financial institutions with different missions, ensures that most people have access to some financial services. Efforts to transfer microfinance innovations such as solidarity lending from developing countries to developed ones have met with little success.
In Stuart Rutherford’s recent book The Poor and Their Money, he cites several types of needs:
Poor people find creative and often collaborative ways to meet these needs, primarily through creating and exchanging different forms of non-cash value. Common substitutes for cash vary from country to country but typically include livestock, grains, jewellery and precious metals.
As Marguerite Robinson describes in The Microfinance Revolution, the 1980s demonstrated that "microfinance could provide large-scale outreach profitably," and in the 1990s, "microfinance began to develop as an industry" (2001, p. 54). In the 2000s, the microfinance industry's objective is to satisfy the unmet demand on a much larger scale, and to play a role in reducing poverty. While much progress has been made in developing a viable, commercial microfinance sector in the last few decades, several issues remain that need to be addressed before the industry will be able to satisfy massive worldwide demand. The obstacles or challenges to building a sound commercial microfinance industry include:
Often people don't have enough money when they face a need, so they borrow. A poor family might borrow from relatives to buy land, from a moneylender to buy rice, or from a microfinance institution to buy a sewing machine. Since these loans must be repaid by saving after the cost is incurred, Rutherford calls this 'saving down'. Rutherford's point is that microcredit is addressing only half the problem, and arguably the less important half: poor people borrow to help them save and accumulate assets. Microcredit institutions should fund their loans through savings accounts that help poor people manage their myriad risks.
Most needs are met through mix of saving and credit. A benchmark impact assessment of Grameen Bank and two other large microfinance institutions in Bangladesh found that for every $1 they were lending to clients to finance rural non-farm micro-enterprise, about $2.50 came from other sources, mostly their clients' savings. This parallels the experience in the West, in which family businesses are funded mostly from savings, especially during start-up.
Recent studies have also shown that informal methods of saving are unsafe. For example a study by Wright and Mutesasira in Uganda concluded that "those with no option but to save in the informal sector are almost bound to lose some money – probably around one quarter of what they save there."
The work of Rutherford, Wright and others has caused practitioners to reconsider a key aspect of the microcredit paradigm: that poor people get out of poverty by borrowing, building microenterprises and increasing their income. The new paradigm places more attention on the efforts of poor people to reduce their many vulnerabilities by keeping more of what they earn and building up their assets. While they need loans, they may find it as useful to borrow for consumption as for microenterprise. A safe, flexible place to save money and withdraw it when needed is also essential for managing household and family risk.
Regionally the highest concentration of these accounts was in India (188 million accounts representing 18% of the total national population). The lowest concentrations were in Latin American and the Caribbean (14 million accounts representing 3% of the total population) and Africa (27 million accounts representing 4% of the total population, with the highest rate of penetration in West Africa, and the highest growth rate in Eastern and Southern Africa ). Considering that most bank clients in the developed world need several active accounts to keep their affairs in order, these figures indicate that the task the microfinance movement has set for itself is still very far from finished.
By type of service "savings accounts in alternative finance institutions outnumber loans by about four to one. This is a worldwide pattern that does not vary much by region."
An important source of detailed data on selected microfinance institutions is the MicroBanking Bulletin, which is published by Microfinance Information Exchange. At the end of 2009 it was tracking 1,084 MFIs that were serving 74 million borrowers ($38 billion in outstanding loans) and 67 million savers ($23 billion in deposits).
As yet there are no studies that indicate the scale or distribution of 'informal' microfinance organizations like ROSCA's and informal associations that help people manage costs like weddings, funerals and sickness. Numerous case studies have been published however, indicating that these organizations, which are generally designed and managed by poor people themselves with little outside help, operate in most countries in the developing world.
Help can come in the form of more and better qualified staff, thus higher education is needed for microfinance institutions. This has begun in some universities, as Oliver Schmidt describes. Mind the management gap
The new financial systems approach pragmatically acknowledges the richness of centuries of microfinance history and the immense diversity of institutions serving poor people in developing world today. It is also rooted in an increasing awareness of diversity of the financial service needs of the world’s poorest people, and the diverse settings in which they live and work.
Brigit Helms in her book 'Access for All: Building Inclusive Financial Systems', distinguishes between four general categories of microfinance providers, and argues for a pro-active strategy of engagement with all of them to help them achieve the goals of the microfinance movement.
;Informal financial service providers: These include moneylenders, pawnbrokers, savings collectors, money-guards, ROSCAs, ASCAs and input supply shops. Because they know each other well and live in the same community, they understand each other’s financial circumstances and can offer very flexible, convenient and fast services. These services can also be costly and the choice of financial products limited and very short-term. Informal services that involve savings are also risky; many people lose their money.
;Member-owned organizations: These include self-help groups, credit unions, and a variety of hybrid organizations like 'financial service associations' and CVECAs. Like their informal cousins, they are generally small and local, which means they have access to good knowledge about each others' financial circumstances and can offer convenience and flexibility. Since they are managed by poor people, their costs of operation are low. However, these providers may have little financial skill and can run into trouble when the economy turns down or their operations become too complex. Unless they are effectively regulated and supervised, they can be 'captured' by one or two influential leaders, and the members can lose their money.
;NGOs: The Microcredit Summit Campaign counted 3,316 of these MFIs and NGOs lending to about 133 million clients by the end of 2006. Led by Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh, Prodem in Bolivia, and FINCA International, headquartered in Washington, DC, these NGOs have spread around the developing world in the past three decades; others, like the Gamelan Council, address larger regions. They have proven very innovative, pioneering banking techniques like solidarity lending, village banking and mobile banking that have overcome barriers to serving poor populations. However, with boards that don’t necessarily represent either their capital or their customers, their governance structures can be fragile, and they can become overly dependent on external donors.
;Formal financial institutions: In addition to commercial banks, these include state banks, agricultural development banks, savings banks, rural banks and non-bank financial institutions. They are regulated and supervised, offer a wider range of financial services, and control a branch network that can extend across the country and internationally. However, they have proved reluctant to adopt social missions, and due to their high costs of operation, often can't deliver services to poor or remote populations. The increasing use of alternative data in credit scoring, such as trade credit is increasing commercial banks' interest in microfinance.
With appropriate regulation and supervision, each of these institutional types can bring leverage to solving the microfinance problem. For example, efforts are being made to link self-help groups to commercial banks, to network member-owned organizations together to achieve economies of scale and scope, and to support efforts by commercial banks to 'down-scale' by integrating mobile banking and e-payment technologies into their extensive branch networks.
Most experts agree that these funds must be sourced locally in countries that are originating microcredit, to reduce transaction costs and exchange rate risks.
There have been problems with disclosure on peer-to-peer sites, with some reporting interest rates of borrowers using the flat rate methodology instead of the familiar banking Annual Percentage Rate. The use of flat rates, which has been outlawed among regulated financial institutions in developed countries, can confuse individual lenders into believing their borrower is paying a lower interest rate than, in fact, they are.
The BBC Business Weekly program reported that much of the supposed benefits associated with microfinance, are perhaps not as compelling as once thought. In a radio interview with Professor Dean Karlan of Yale University, a point was raised concerning a comparison between two groups: one African, financed through microcredit and one control group in the Philippines. The results of this study suggest that many of the benefits from microcredit are in fact loaned to people with existing business, and not to those seeking to establish new businesses. Many of those receiving microcredit also used the loans to supplement the family income. The income that went up in business was true only for men, and not for women. This is striking because one of the supposed major beneficiaries of microfinance is supposed to be targeted at women. Professor Karlan's conclusion was that whilst microcredit is not necessarily bad and can generate some positive benefits, despite some lenders charging interest rates between 40-60%, it isn't the panacea that it is purported to be. He advocates rather than focusing strictly on microcredit, also giving citizens in poor countries access to rudimentary and cheap savings accounts.
To further the point stated by Prof Karlan, microfinancing begets the general tendency of a small business initially supported on credit to gain profits with time and generate micro savings. In his latest study, the famous two time pulitzer prize winner, Nicholas Donabet Kristof states that there is no evidence of any negative influence of micro financing but countless examples of people now looking at the bigger picture and saving for better things have surfaced. The example of BancoSol(Bolivia), where the number of savers has grown to twice as much as the number of borrowers, further strengthens his theory.
Sociologist Jon Westover found that much of the evidence on the effectiveness of microfinance for alleviating poverty is based in anecdotal reports or case studies. He initially found over 100 articles on the subject, but included only the 6 which used enough quantitative data to be representative, and none of which employed rigorous methods such as randomized control trials similar to those reported by Innovations for Poverty Action and the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. One of these studies found that microfinance reduced poverty. Two others were unable to conclude that microfinance reduced poverty, although they attributed some positive effects to the program. Other studies concluded similarly, with surveys finding that a majority of participants feel better about finances with some feeling worse.
Microfinance has also been combined with business education and with other packages of health interventions. A project undertaken in Peru by Innovations for Poverty Action found that those borrowers randomly selected to receive financial training as part of their borrowing group meetings had higher profits, although there was not a reduction in "the proportion who reported having problems in their business".
For example, there has been much criticism of the high interest rates charged to borrowers. The real average portfolio yield cited by the sample of 704 microfinance institutions that voluntarily submitted reports to the MicroBanking Bulletin in 2006 was 22.3% annually. However, annual rates charged to clients are higher, as they also include local inflation and the bad debt expenses of the microfinance institution. Muhammad Yunus has recently made much of this point, and in his latest book argues that microfinance institutions that charge more than 15% above their long-term operating costs should face penalties.
Milford Bateman, the author of Why Doesn't Microfinance Work?, argues that microcredit offers only an "illusion of poverty reduction". "As in any lottery or game of chance, a few in poverty do manage to establish microenterprises that produce a decent living," he argues, but "these isolated and often temporary positives are swamped by the largely overlooked negatives." Bateman concludes that "The international development community is now faced with the reality that, overall, microfinance has been a development policy blunder of quite historic proportions." Here Bateman, like many writers, confuses microfinance as a broad sector with microcredit, a single microfinance intervention (see delineation above).
The role of donors has also been questioned. The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) recently commented that "a large proportion of the money they spend is not effective, either because it gets hung up in unsuccessful and often complicated funding mechanisms (for example, a government apex facility), or it goes to partners that are not held accountable for performance. In some cases, poorly conceived programs have retarded the development of inclusive financial systems by distorting markets and displacing domestic commercial initiatives with cheap or free money."
There has also been criticism of microlenders for not taking more responsibility for the working conditions of poor households, particularly when borrowers become quasi-wage labourers, selling crafts or agricultural produce through an organization controlled by the MFI. The desire of MFIs to help their borrower diversify and increase their incomes has sparked this type of relationship in several countries, most notably Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of borrowers effectively work as wage labourers for the marketing subsidiaries of Grameen Bank or BRAC. Critics maintain that there are few if any rules or standards in these cases governing working hours, holidays, working conditions, safety or child labour, and few inspection regimes to correct abuses. Some of these concerns have been taken up by unions and socially responsible investment advocates.
For example, BusinessWeek reported that some Mexicans are stumbling with terms of newly available funding.
Other criticism was raised by the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of a Mexican MFI Banco Compartamos in 2007. As the company put its shares on Mexican Stock Exchange it was able to generate very high profits that were achieved by rising interest rates on their micro-loans that at some point reached 86% per year. In July 2010 India's biggest MFI, SKS Microfinance also went public. In both instances Muhammad Yunus publicly stated his disagreement, saying that the poor should be the only beneficiaries of microfinance.
Microcredit has been blamed for many suicides in India: aggressive lending by microcredit companies in Andra Pradesh is said to have resulted in over 80 deaths in 2010.
Category:Development * Category:Poverty Category:Social economy
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In 1987 he was selected for the BBC News Trainee scheme - a two year BBC training system, usually taking only 6 people per course. Khan progressed to jobs as a BBC Reporter, Producer, and Writer, working in both television and radio, and would later become one of the founding News Presenters on BBC World Service Television News. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991. In 1993, he moved to CNN International, where he became a senior anchor for the network's global news shows. Events he covered included the 1996 and 1999 coverage of elections in India; the 1997 historic election in Britain; and in April 1998 the unprecedented live coverage from the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj.
In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show CNN: Q&A; with Riz Khan, and he has conducted interviews with guests including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and genomic scientist J. Craig Venter. Khan also secured the world exclusive with Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf following his coup in October 1999. Khan also hosted Q&A-Asia; with Riz Khan. These interactive shows put world newsmakers and celebrities up for viewer questions live by phone, e-mail, video-mail and fax, along with questions and comments taken from the real-time chatroom that opens half-an-hour before each show.
Khan currently hosts the Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera English. On his show, Khan interviews analysts and policy makers and allows viewers to interact with them via phone, email, SMS messages or fax.
Khan speaks Urdu and Hindi, and also understands other South Asian languages such as Punjabi and Kutchi. He has studied French, and can understand some other European languages, including Swedish.
In 2005 he authored his first book, Al-Waleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince, published by Harper Collins.
Category:1962 births Category:Al Jazeera people Category:Alumni of Cardiff University Category:Alumni of the University of Portsmouth Category:British Muslims Category:British people of Indian descent Category:English people of Pakistani descent Category:British journalists Category:British television presenters Category:Living people Category:Punjabi people Category:Gujarati people Category:People from Aden
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| Name | Vikram Akula |
|---|---|
| Birth place | Hyderabad, India |
| Occupation | Founder, SKS Microfinance India Ltd |
| Nationality | American |
According to Vikram Akula, he "started SKS because I was overwhelmed by the poverty I saw in India and was looking for a way to catalyze rapid economic development for the poor."
Category:Microfinance Category:Fulbright Scholars Category:Development specialists Category:Living people
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| Name | Tia Carrere |
|---|---|
| Caption | Tia Carrere attending "Susan G. Komen's 8th Annual Fashion For The Cure" event - Hollywood, CA on Sept. 24, 2009 |
| Birth name | Althea Janairo |
| Birth date | January 02, 1967 |
| Birth place | Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress, Model, Singer |
| Spouse | Elie Samaha (1992–2000) (divorced)Simon Wakelin (2002–2010) (divorced) 1 child |
| Years active | 1985–present |
Tia Carrere (born Althea Rae Duhinio Janairo on January 2, 1967) is an American actress, model, and singer, perhaps most widely known for her role as Cassandra Wong in the feature films Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2 and as Sydney Fox in the TV series Relic Hunter.
She won a Grammy Award in 2009 for her third album 'Ikena, which was also produced by Ho, and was a finalist at the 2010 for He Nani, the third album she had recorded with Ho as her producer.
On November 30, 2002, she married again, this time to photojournalist Simon Wakelin. They have a daughter, Bianca, born September 25, 2005. At present, she lives in Los Angeles. On April 2, 2010, Carrere filed for divorce in person at Los Angeles Superior Court. According to court documents she cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for the divorce and is asking for sole physical custody of their daughter Bianca. Their divorce was finalized in August 2010, with the two of them reportedly sharing custody of Bianca.
Category:1967 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from Hawaii Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:American actors of Asian descent Category:American expatriates in Canada Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American musicians of Filipino descent Category:American musicians of Spanish descent Category:American people of Filipino descent Category:American people of Spanish descent Category:American pop singers Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Dancing with the Stars (US TV series) participants Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People from Honolulu, Hawaii
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| Name | Raghuram Rajan |
|---|---|
| Color | lightsteelblue |
| Image name | Raghuram Rajan, IMF 69MS040421048l.jpg |
| Birth date | February 03, 1963Bhopal, India |
| Nationality | India |
| Institution | University of Chicago |
| Field | Financial economics |
| Alma mater | MIT (Ph.D.)IIM Ahmedabad (M.B.A.)IIT-Delhi (B.Tech.) |
| Awards | 2003 Fischer Black Prize,the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for 2010. |
| Signature | |
| Repec prefix | e | repec_id = pra149 |
Rajan is also a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Economics and Sloan School of Management; at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Stockholm School of Economics. He also has worked as a consultant for the Indian Finance Ministry, World Bank, Federal Reserve Board and Swedish Parliamentary Commission.
He was the "Economic Counselor and Director of Research" (Chief Economist) at the International Monetary Fund from September 2003 until January 2007. In 2003, he was also the inaugural recipient of the Fischer Black Prize awarded by the American Finance Association for contributions to the theory and practice of finance by an economist under age 40.
In 2005, at a celebration honoring Alan Greenspan, who was about to retire as chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Rajan delivered a controversial paper that was critical of the financial sector. In that paper, "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?", Rajan "argued that disaster might loom." Rajan argued that financial sector managers were encouraged to
(take) risks that generate severe adverse consequences with small probability but, in return, offer generous compensation the rest of the time. These risks are known as tail risks.[...] But perhaps the most important concern is whether banks will be able to provide liquidity to financial markets so that if the tail risk does materialize, financial positions can be unwound and losses allocated so that the consequences to the real economy are minimized.
Thus Rajan described the 2007-2008 collapse of the world's financial system.
The response to Rajan's paper at the time was negative. For example, former U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Lawrence Summers called the warnings “misguided.”
In April 2009, Rajan penned a guest column for The Economist, in which he proposed a regulatory system that might minimize boom-bust financial cycles.
Category:People from Bhopal Category:Indian economists Category:American people of Indian descent Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:University of Chicago faculty Category:American economists Category:American economics writers Category:American academics Category:Indian immigrants to the United States Category:Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad alumni Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:Indian Institute of Technology Delhi alumni
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| Name | Muhammad Yunus মুহাম্মদ ইউনুস |
|---|---|
| Caption | Muhammad Yunus at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 31, 2009 |
| Birth date | June 28, 1940 |
| Birth place | Chittagong, East Bengal, now Bangladesh) |
| Death date | |
| Occupation | BankerEconomist |
| Known for | Grameen BankMicrocredit |
| Alma mater | Chittagong University Vanderbilt University |
| Spouse | Vera Forostenko (1970-1979)Afrozi Yunus (Present) |
| Children | 2 |
| Nationality | Bangladeshi |
| Religion | Islam |
| Awards |
Muhammad Yunus (, pronounced ) (born 28 June 1940) is a Bangladeshi economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, an institution that provides microcredit (small loans to poor people possessing no collateral) to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency. In 2006 Yunus and Grameen received the Nobel Prize for Peace. Yunus himself has received several other national and international honors.
He previously was a professor of economics where he developed the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. These loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. He is the author of Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of Grameen America and Grameen Foundation. In early 2007 Yunus showed interest in launching a political party in Bangladesh named Nagorik Shakti (Citizen Power), but later discarded the plan. He is one of the founding members of Global Elders.
Yunus also serves on the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation, a public charity created in 1998 with entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner’s historic $1 billion gift to support United Nations causes. The UN Foundation builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world’s most pressing problems, and broadens support for the UN.
During the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, Yunus founded a citizen's committee and ran the Bangladesh Information Center, with other Bangladeshis living in the United States, to raise support for liberation. He became involved with poverty reduction after observing the famine of 1974, and established a rural economic program as a research project. In 1975, he developed a Nabajug (New Era) Tebhaga Khamar (three share farm) which the government adopted as the Packaged Input Programme. Introduced by then president Ziaur Rahman in late 1970s, the Government formed 40,392 village governments (gram sarkar) as a fourth layer of government in 2003. On 2 August 2005, in response to a petition filed by Bangladesh Legal Aids and Services Trust (BLAST) the High Court had declared Gram Sarkar illegal and unconstitutional.
Yunus finally succeeded in securing a loan from the government Janata Bank to lend it to the poor in Jobra in December 1976. The institution continued to operate by securing loans from other banks for its projects. By 1982, the bank had 28,000 members. On 1 October 1983 the pilot project began operations as a full-fledged bank and was renamed the Grameen Bank (Village Bank) to make loans to poor Bangladeshis. Yunus and his colleagues encountered everything from violent radical leftists to the conservative clergy who told women that they would be denied a Muslim burial if they borrowed money from the Grameen Bank. To ensure repayment, the bank uses a system of "solidarity groups". These small informal groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment and support one another's efforts at economic self-advancement. In 1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate organizations, as the fisheries project became Grameen Motsho (Grameen Fisheries Foundation) and the irrigation project became Grameen Krishi (Grameen Agriculture Foundation). as well as Grameen Telecom, which has a stake in Grameenphone (GP), biggest private sector phone company in Bangladesh. The Village Phone (Polli Phone) project of GP has brought cell-phone ownership to 260,000 rural poor in over 50,000 villages since the beginning of the project in March 1997.
The success of the Grameen model of microfinancing has inspired similar efforts in a hundred countries throughout the developing world and even in industrialized nations, including the United States. Many, but not all, microcredit projects also retain its emphasis on lending specifically to women. More than 94% of Grameen loans have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and who are more likely than men to devote their earnings to their families. For his work with the Grameen Bank, Yunus was named an Global Academy Member in 2001.
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was a vocal advocate for the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Muhammed Yunus. He expressed this in Rolling Stone magazine as well as in his autobiography My Life. In a speech given at University of California, Berkeley in 2002, President Clinton described Dr. Yunus as "a man who long ago should have won the Nobel Prize [and] I’ll keep saying that until they finally give it to him." Conversely, The Economist stated explicitly that Yunus was a poor choice for the award, stating: "...the Nobel committee could have made a braver, more difficult, choice by declaring that there would be no recipient at all."
in Davos, Switzerland.]] He has won a number of other awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, the King Abdul Aziz medal in 2007, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize, the Sydney Peace Prize, and in December 2007 the Ecuadorian Peace Prize. Additionally, Dr. Yunus has been awarded 26 honorary doctorate degrees, and 15 special awards. Bangladesh government brought out a commemorative stamp to honor his Nobel Award. In January 2008, Houston, Texas declared 14 January as "Muhammad Yunus Day". He was invited and gave the MIT commencement address delivered on 6 June 2008, and Oxford's Romanes Lecture on 2 December 2008. He received the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service from the Eisenhower Fellowships at a ceremony in Philadelphia on 21 May 2009. He was also voted 2nd in Prospect Magazine's 2008 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals.
Yunus was named among the most desired thinkers the world should listen to by the FP 100 (world's most influential elite) in the December 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine. On March 1, 2010, Yunus was awarded the prestigious Presidential Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. This is the highest honor available from the University.
On May 15, 2010, Yunus gave the commencement speech at Rice University for the graduating class of 2010.
On May 16, 2010, Yunus gave the commencement speech at Duke University for the graduating class of 2010. During this ceremony, he was also awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters.
A documentary on Yunus' work titled To Catch a Dollar was shown at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and is due to be released in theaters in the US on September 2010. Another documentary film, "Bonsai - Celebrating the Vision of Muhammad Yunus", that looks at both microcredit and his social businesses is slated for release sometime in 2010.
In 2010, The British Magazine New Statesman Listed Muhammad Yunus at 40th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".
Yunus was keynote speaker in Microfinance Summit of South-East Asia in Indonesia 2008.
On 18 July 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel, and Desmond Tutu convened a group of world leaders to contribute their wisdom, independent leadership and integrity together to the world. Nelson Mandela announced the formation of this new group, The Global Elders, in a speech he delivered on the occasion of his 89th birthday. Archbishop Tutu is to serve as the Chair of The Elders. The founding members of this group include Machel, Yunus, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, and Mary Robinson. The Elders are to be independently funded by a group of Founders, including Richard Branson, Peter Gabriel, Ray Chambers; Michael Chambers; Bridgeway Foundation; Pam Omidyar, Humanity United; Amy Robbins; Shashi Ruia, Dick Tarlow; and The United Nations Foundation. Yunus is a member of the Africa Progress Panel (APP), an independent authority on Africa launched in April 2007 to focus world leaders’ attention on delivering their commitments to the continent. The Panel launched a major report in London on Monday 16 June 2008 entitled Africa's Development: Promises and Prospects.
In July 2009, Yunus became a member of the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation International Advisory Board to support the organisation's poverty reduction work. (S22E02).]]
;Articles by Muhammed Yunus
;On Muhammad Yunus
Category:Bangladeshi economists Category:Bangladeshi businesspeople Category:Development specialists Category:International development Category:Microfinance Category:Recipients of the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize Category:Nobel Peace Prize laureates Category:Bangladeshi Nobel laureates Category:Bengali Nobel laureates Category:Fulbright Scholars Category:World Food Prize laureates Category:Aga Khan Award for Architecture winners Category:Dhaka University alumni Category:Vanderbilt University alumni Category:Middle Tennessee State University faculty Category:Global Elders Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:Ashoka Bangladesh Fellows
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| Honorific-prefix | The Honorable |
|---|---|
| Name | Geoff Davis |
| Image name | Geoff Davis, official 109th Congressional photo.jpg |
| Date of birth | October 26, 1958 |
| Place of birth | Montreal, Quebec |
| State | Kentucky |
| District | 4th |
| Term start | January 3, 2005 |
| Preceded | Ken Lucas |
| Succeeded | Incumbent |
| Party | Republican |
| Religion | Baptist |
| Spouse | Pat Davis |
| Occupation | manufacturing consultant |
| Residence | Hebron, Kentucky |
| Alma mater | US Military Academy |
| Branch | United States Army |
| Serviceyears | 1976-1987 |
| Unit | Rangers |
Geoffrey C. "Geoff" Davis (born October 26, 1958) is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party.
The district includes 24 counties in the northeastern part of the state, stretching from the fringes of the Louisville area to the West Virginia border. Most of its vote, however, is cast in the Cincinnati suburbs.
Davis has a solidly conservative voting record; according to his congressional website, he has positioned himself as pro-life and in favor of industrial deregulation.
In November, 2005, Davis made headlines for his response to Pennsylvania representative John Murtha's call for withdrawal from Iraq, saying, "Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, as well as Abu Musab Zarqawi, have made it quite clear in their internal propaganda that they cannot win unless they can drive the Americans out. And they know that they can't do that there, so they've brought the battlefield to the halls of Congress. And, frankly, the liberal leadership have put politics ahead of sound, fiscal and national security policy. And what they have done is cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies." Davis faced harsh criticism for his remarks, including, for example, from the Democratic Veterans of Northern Kentucky, and sparked a drive led by national Democratic Party leaders to get Lucas to run against him in 2006.
Davis is a staunch advocate of a federal prohibition of online poker. In 2006, he supported H.R. 4411, the Goodlatte-Leach Internet Gambling Prohibition Act. In 2008, he opposed H.R. 5767, the Payment Systems Protection Act (a bill that sought to place a moratorium on enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act while the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve defined "unlawful Internet gambling").
Two years later, however, Lucas declined to run, honoring a promise to serve only three terms. In the 2004 race for the open seat, Davis defeated his Democratic opponent Nick Clooney, father of actor George Clooney. The race had been rated as highly competitive by outside observers.
The Cook Political Report, an independent non-partisan newsletter, rated the race for Kentucky's 4th Congressional District as a "Republican Toss-Up", meaning either party has a good chance of winning.
Election-night (uncertified) count, gave Davis a lead of 7-points and over 73,000 votes more than Lucas.
Davis has received donations from Republican Duke Cunningham, who pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion. Davis has not chosen to give back the money from Cunningham, while many other recipients have. Davis received a donation from Congressman Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty for bribery and his involvement with convicted felon Jack Abramoff.
"I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button," Davis added. "He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."
Davis also made reference to Obama as being put into the Senate by someone who will probably spend many years of his life in prison (presumably a reference to Tony Rezko) and that Obama had never had a real job before.
Davis later apologized for his comment in a letter:
Dear Senator Obama:On Saturday night I gave a speech in which I used a poor choice of words when discussing the national security policy positions of the Presidential candidates. I was quoted as saying "That boy's finger does not need to be on the button."
My poor choice of words is regrettable and was in no way meant to impugn you or your integrity. I offer my sincere apology to you and ask for your forgiveness.
Though we may disagree on many issues, I know that we share the goal of a prosperous, secure future for our nation. My comment has detracted from the dialogue that we should all be having on legitimate policy differences and in no way reflects the personal and professional respect I have for you.
Sincerely, Geoff Davis
Category:Living people Category:1958 births Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Kentucky Category:Kentucky Republicans Category:People from Montreal
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
