13
SPOTLIGHT
NOV 2015
UMP
大學廣場
What is poverty? How should we face and solve
the problem of poverty? 30 years ago, Professor
Muhammad Yunus asked himself these
questions and decided to set up the Grameen
Bank to help the financially disadvantaged.
The Nobel Laureate in Peace came to CUHK on 14
October 2015 to deliver a lecture which is entitled
“Small Loans for a Big Future”. During the lecture,
Professor Yunus shared his journey of tackling the
problem of poverty from Bangladesh to worldwide
and his views on banking, business and society.
Founding of the Grameen Bank
Before setting up the Grameen Bank (“Village Bank”
in Bengali), Professor Yunus has been the head of
the Economics Department at Chittagong University.
Two years later (in 1974), a huge famine broke out
in Bangladesh. The comfortable job of teaching
economic theories in an ivory tower started to make
Professor Yunus feel empty inside. He realized that
addressing starvation and poverty faced by millions
in the country would be a far more important and
meaningful task. He began to investigate the cause of
poverty in a nearby village.
Small Loans for a Big Future – AWay to Tackle Poverty
Student Reporter: Shirley Lee
During the investigation, Professor Yunus discovered
the prevalence of loan sharks in the village. Since
conventional banks were not willing to serve the
poor, villagers could only turn to usurers even they
often lent money with a high interest rate. Under
the pressure of usury, getting out of poverty was a
far-fetched dream to many families in the village.
Professor Yunus then made the best option available
at the time. He borrowed money from a bank, and
then lent the money to the poor villagers. The result
was astonishing, every single borrower returned the
debt on time. He presented this result to conventional
banks, persuading them to offer microcredit loans
to the financially disadvantaged. However, all the
banks refused because they saw human beings from
an economic perspective, that is, all human being
are selfish individuals who always maximize their
profits. Based on the belief that human beings, banks,
and sizeable financial groups can also be selfless,
Professor Yunus decided to create a new bank on
his own, a bank that would serve the rural poor
exclusively. In 1983, the Grameen Bank was founded.
Professor Muhammad Yunus presided at the I
•
CARE
University Lecture on Civility
Professor James Mirrlees (left), also a Nobel Laureate
in Economics, was facilitating the audiences
´
questions
and feedback
