Muhammad Yunus
Managing Director, Grameen Bank

"I receive this Award as an honor to the two million borrowers -- hard working, determined women who worked to change the mindset of the entire world; who wanted to demonstrate that the wrong that has been done to the poor people by the financial institutions must be righted. "

In 1976 Muhammad Yunus, Professor of Economics at Chittagong University met a woman in a village in Bangladesh fashioning two bamboo chairs. He asked her how much she made and she explained that the man who sold her the bamboo insisted she sell them back to him for only a penny per chair. She needed 30 cents to buy the bamboo. Muhammad gave her the money from his own pocket and came back several weeks later to find that the woman had become an entrepreneur, with helpers, producing a fine line of chairs. This experience changed Muhammad's life and was the genesis of the Grameen Bank dedicated to providing microcredit to the poorest of the poor. Since its founding in 1983, the Bank has provided credit not aid for millions of people, overwhelmingly women, with a return rate on its loans equal to the best banks in the world. Now there are Grameen-style lending institutions in over 60 nations similarly dedicated to empowering the poor with small loans. In a world which have largely given up on the poor, Muhammad Yunus turned economics upside down and created opportunities for those left abandoned. Now, there is no rational reason why the world cannot eliminate poverty altogether largely by empowering women to take control of their own lives. The pioneering work of Muhammad Yunus has made this possible.