Nobel Prize Winner Speaks on Microlending

Posted on May 30, 2007

On May 10, 2007, Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, spoke at the Vanderbilt University Senior Class Day. Dr. Yunus received a PhD in economics from Vanderbilt in 1971. He founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh which has improved the lives of millions of people throughout the world by making small loans to fund enterprises and to buy livestock. This microcredit business plan is the model used in Ndathi, Kenya. Dr. Yunus said in his address “the blame for poverty lies in unfair economic systems, not poor people. Nothing is wrong with the poor; they’re as good as anybody else. They’re a smart as anybody else…… Poverty is not created by the poor…. Our job is to change the world we live in to make it better…. There is no need to be (poor), and we can help every human being get out of poverty as soon as we can so that we have a world where there is not a single human being suffering from the misery of poverty, And in that world, the only place where we can see poverty will be in the poverty museums.”