Muhammad Yunus

Nobel Peace Prize


Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, founded a banking system 30 years ago to lend small amounts of money to the rural poor in Bangladeshi villages. Most of the low-interest microloans go to women, who use them to start their own profit-making enterprises, mainly in agriculture, crafts, or services.

Grameen Bank now has 2,422 branches, employs more than 20,000 people, and has loaned more than $6 billion since its founding. Borrowers own most of the equity in the bank. The company has been profitable in all but three years since it was founded.

Business Week Has Named Dr. Yunus as One of "The Greatest Entrepreneurs of All Time" . Yunus imagined what would happen if a bank extended credit to those people who would never traditionally receive it. In the process, he created a system that empowered the poor by helping them become entrepreneurs.


In addition to the Nobel Price for his efforts to create economic and social development from below."[1] Yunus himself has received several other international honors, including the ITU World Information Society Award, Ramon Magsaysay Award, the World Food Prize and the Sydney Peace Prize. He is the author of Banker to the Poor and a founding board member of Grameen Foundation.