MacBook Air 

實在太酷了

有人嘆為觀止，有人指指點點，不論如何，這是一個里程碑。

“for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”

Muhammad Yunus

Project: Grameen Bank

Location: Bangladesh, other services under the “Grameen Family of Organizations” operate worldwide.

Muhammad Yunus has had phenomenal success helping people lift themselves out of poverty in rural Bangladesh by providing them with credit without requiring collateral. Yunus developed his revolutionary micro-credit system with the belief that it would be a cost effective and scalable weapon to fight poverty.

Yunus told his story and that of the bank in the book “Banker to the Poor,” co-authored by him and Alan Jolis. In the book, 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.

What Does Grameen Bank Do?

Grameen Bank has reversed conventional banking wisdom by focusing on women borrowers, dispensing of the requirement of collateral and extending loans only to the very poorest borrowers. In fact, to qualify for a loan from the Grameen Bank, a villager must demonstrate that her family owns less than one half acre of land.

The bank has provided $4.7 billion dollars to 4.4 million families in rural Bangladesh. With 1,417 branches, Grameen provides services in 51,000 villages, covering three quarters of all the villages in Bangladesh. Yet its system is largely based on mutual trust and the enterprise and accountability of millions of women villagers.

Today, more than 250 institutions in nearly 100 countries operate micro-credit programs based on the Grameen Bank model, while thousands of other micro-credit programs have emulated, adapted or been inspired by the Grameen Bank. According to one expert in innovative government, the program established by Yunus at the Grameen Bank “is the single most important development in the third world in the last 100 years, and I don’t think any two people will disagree.”

© Copyright 2005 Oregon Public Broadcasting

孟加拉窮人銀行家 奪諾貝爾和平獎

有「窮人的銀行家」之稱的孟加拉經濟學者尤努斯，和他創立的鄉村銀行（Grameen Bank，Grameen是孟加拉文的鄉村）讓數百萬人脫離貧窮，十三日榮獲諾貝爾和平獎。
為了貸放小錢給孟加拉窮人，特別是女性，讓他們不需要擔保品就可以貸款創業，六十六歲的穆罕默德•尤努斯發明微額貸款（microcredit）概念，並於一九七六年創立專門協助窮人的新型銀行。
如今這種貸款方式已在全球一百多國推行，從美國到烏干達都有。微額貸款的概念是貸款給不符合一般銀行貸款資格的窮人極小額金錢，通常是五十美元到一百美元（約台幣一千六百五十元到三千三百元），供他們創業。
尤努斯曾說：「孟加拉樣樣不行，連電都沒有，但微額貸款進行得很順利。」
尤努斯和他的銀行共同獲獎。得獎理由是他們利用微額貸款等創新經濟計畫，協助他們的國家「從底層創造經濟和社會發展」。
諾貝爾委員會的頌詞說：「世上每個人都有潛力和權利過好生活，尤努斯和鄉村銀行證明一貧如洗的人也能自食其力。」「除非廣大人民都能找到擺脫貧窮的方法，否則不會有持久的和平。微額貸款就是一種方法。從底層發展也能促進民主和人權。」
根據鄉村銀行網站，該銀行現在有六百五十萬個貸款客戶，百分之九十六為女性，有二千二百二十六個分行，分布在七萬一千多個村莊。
尤努斯和鄉村銀行將獲得一千萬瑞典克朗（約台幣四千六百萬元），預定十二月十日在奧斯陸頒獎。
2006/10/14 07  聯合報