Muhammad Yunus: Banker to The Poor

        What Yunus Saw In Bangladesh and How He Got Started
In 1976 Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economics professor, felt discouraged by the poverty devastating his home country. Dismayed by the fact that the very principles he taught in the classroom, failed outside the university’s walls, he took to the streets with his students. His economics classes surveyed the local villagers (the unemployed poor) to discover what factors held the villagers at such a low standard of living (Yunus, 34-42). Forced to borrow from village lenders at unfair rates, Yunus found many of these people to be stuck within the negative cycles of debt. Many men in the village could go out and work, but the women were forced to borrow to produce capital such a stools. One village woman explained this phenomenon, “‘the money lender would demand a lot. People who deal with them only get poorer’” (Yunus, 47). But for the village women, borrowing money at the highest rates stood as the only option to obtaining basic staples such as food, clothing, and maybe a roof. A student of Yunus’ complied a list of 42 villagers and the loans they would request if such an opportunity arose. The amount requested totaled less than $27 (Yunus, 49). Yunus made this first loan out of his own pocket, initiating the formation of the Grameen bank and poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.
Concerned for the growing poverty in Bangladesh, Yunus decided the best way to aid the unemployed poor was to give them credit and continue to make loans available to them, which he did this through the formation of the Grameen Bank.