Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize 2006 “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”.
Link to nobelprize.org.

Grameen Foundation: “Combining the power of microfinance, technology and innovative solutions to defeat global poverty.”

Interview with Muhammad Yunus –

“Poverty … Is An Artificial Creation. It doesn’t belong to human civilization, and we can change that, we can make people come out of poverty … the only thing we have to do is to redesign our institutions and policies, and there will be no people who will be suffering from poverty.” - Muhammad Yunus”

[Outlook India: Link]

Meet the New Heroes: Muhammad Yunus –

Yunus recalls that in 1974 he was teaching economics at a Chittagong University in southern Bangladesh, when the country experienced a terrible famine in which thousands starved to death.

“We tried to ignore it,” he says. “But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the capital, Dhaka. Soon the trickle became a flood. Hungry people were everywhere. Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead. They all looked alike: men, women, children. Old people looked like children, and children looked like old people.

The thrill he had once experienced studying economics and teaching his students elegant economic theories that could supposedly cure societal problems soon left him entirely. As the famine worsened he began to dread his own lectures.

“Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me. How could I go on telling my students make believe stories in the name of economics? I needed to run away from these theories and from my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person’s existence.”

Yunus went to the nearby village of Jobra where he learned the economic realities of the poor. Yunus wanted to help, and he cooked up several plans working with his students. He found that one of his many ideas was more successful than the rest: offering people tiny loans for self-employment. Grameen Bank was born and an economic revolution had begun.

[PBS: Link]

Atlantic Monthly : “The Barefoot Bank With Cheek”

The Grameen Bank, once dubbed the “barefoot bank,” can no longer be described in quaint terms. With more than 1,050 branch offices that serve 35,000 villages and two million customers, 94 percent of them women, Grameen is the largest rural lender in Bangladesh, and the proportion of its loans that are repaid, 97 percent, is comparable to the repayment rate at Chase Manhattan Bank. Last year, after eighteen years of making small loans, Grameen had disbursed more than $1 billion; at the present rate the bank will cross the $2 billion mark sometime next year.

[Atlantic Monthly: Link]

Bangladeshi PM congratulates Yunus on winning Nobel Prize

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia has profusely congratulated Professor Dr Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. “This is a much awaited prize,” she said in a message Friday.

… The Prime Minister said this prize is not only a great honor for Prof. Yunus himself, but also a pride for Bangladesh.

[People’s Daily Online: Link]

Amnesty International “warmly congratulates Muhammad Yunus and Grameem Bank on being awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize”

[Amnesty International: Link]

Secretary of State Rice says Yunus an ‘excellent choice’ for Nobel Peace Prize:

I congratulate the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for an excellent choice for this year’s laureate, to whom we also send our warmest appreciation for his outstanding work on behalf of the world’s impoverished.

[International Herald Tribune: Link]

Venezuela’s Chavez calls Nobel winner Yunus an example in anti-poverty fight

“Let’s give a round of applause to our friend,” Chavez said, calling him an “example in the fight against poverty …. We’re going down that road,” said Chavez, who has promised to eventually eliminate poverty in his oil-producing country.

[International Herald Tribune: Link]

Forbes on Grameen and microlending:

Grameen has inspired micro credit lenders elsewhere, notably the Philippines and Africa. The general concept is the lender is established and negotiates low rates for its own borrowings. It then turns around and lends to very small-scale borrowers at market rates. The system works if the micro lender is able to identify viable businesses that just need a little financial assistance to get started, expand or meet a temporary need.

[Forbes: Link]

Nobel Winner Yunus: Microcredit Missionary

The professor’s most recent innovation is still an experiment: Grameen Danone Food Co. is a proposed partnership between Grameen and France’s Group Danone (DA ) to make a nutritious and inexpensive baby formula. Next on his list are low-cost eye care and rural hospitals with video-conferencing between villagers and doctors in Dhaka. “In Bangladesh, where nothing works and there’s no electricity,” Yunus says, “microcredit works like clockwork.”

[Business Week: Link]

Muhammad Yunus: News @ Google

A Force More Powerful: The Game of NONVIOLENT Strategy

Featuring ten scenarios inspired by history, A Force More Powerful simulates nonviolent struggles to win freedom and secure human rights against dictators, occupiers, colonizers, and corrupt regimes, as well as campaigns for political and human rights for minorities and women. The game models real-world experience, allowing players to devise strategies, apply tactics and see the results.

Link