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Creating a World Without Poverty
posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 04:22 PM
Gordon Brown and Muhammad Yunus; In search of businesses that do good
There were glimmers of sunlight and smiles raining on 10 Downing Street for the first time in a long while when Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus met with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 21st April 2008 for a meeting in which Yunus expresses the importance of micro-financing in Africa.
Rule-breaker, innovator, risk-taker, visionary, pioneer, banker to the poor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Bangladesh's Professor Muhammad Yunus' achievement's are a huge leap forward for social enterprises. The inspirational microcredit revolutionary is the perfect example of how to set up a profitable business that also provides real social benefit to some of the poorest people in the world...
Find below the script of the meeting between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Muhammed Yunus.
Scene 1 Greeting
Prime Minister Gordon Brown: Hello How are you, what a pleasure
Dr. Muhammad Yunus: It’s a pleasure for me
PM : It’s good to see you
(They Shake Hands)
Scene 2 Muhammad Yunus Introduces himself to the camera from the heart of 10 Downing Street
I am Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh with Grameen bank. We lend money to extremely poor people for income generating activities. I am suggesting that Africa needs a lot of micro-finance programs – tiny loans 30 dollar, 45 dollar 100 dollar – and paid back in weekly installments. It doesn’t need any collateral. It doesn’t need any lawyers into it but the repayment rate is very high: 98% or 99%.
Micro-finance is very important because it allows people to bring out their own initiative, bring out their own capability. And they can move on their own speed to create income, to get out of poverty. And people in Africa are very enterprising people, particularly women. Micro-finance focuses on women. Today in Bangladesh within Grameen Bank we have 7.5 million borrowers a- 97% of them women. The Prime Minister is very much aware of it; very supportive of it. So we will discuss how to make it happen in Africa
Scene 3 PM and Dr Yunus sitting round a cup of tea
PM There is so much goodwill to the work you have been doing, and it is so important
Scene 4 After tea: Muhammad Yunus denouement
At the same time, we will be discussing another concept – the social business : business to do good to people - (show copy of Dr Yunus new bestselling book Creating a World Without Poverty- Social Business, The Future of Capitalism ). This is business where you aim at the social objectives, not for making money for yourself. You cover your cost, make profit but the profit doesn’t go to investors or outsiders but stays with the company to achieve the goal that you set out to help achieve or lead.
Comments
Chris Macrae
Thursday, February 19, 2009 11:57 PM
Interestingly microcredit - done the way bangladeshi's ,model it - now seems to be the best chnace the world over has of mitigating banking crises- yunus was seen in DC briefing bernanke earlier this month. I am an unquwenchable fan of all the main bangladesh microcredit models - even so the best emerging model as 200 people from JP Morgan heard in manhattan last month at the nest news of the decade slot produced by microcreditsummit is kenya'a Jamii Bora
David McQueen
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 02:51 PM
I am a huge fan of Yunus but I don't think microfinancing is the way to alleviate poverty in Africa. It will certainly chip away at the problem but many impoverished countries could improve with just marginal increases in trade opportunities. The thing is people are greedy. Poverty is as big an issue in more prosperous countries as it is in "developing countries". In the meantime however I applaud Yunus' efforts. His book aint half bad either.
Chris Macrae
Friday, May 16, 2008 03:37 PM
I hope GB remembers to Knight Dr Yunus. It would be illogical to use number 10 in this way to communicate why goodwill matters more than any other metric of sustainability investment, and not to Knight Dr Y. Moreover, it would be sad if the two of the 3 greatest commonwealth leaders of our times - Queen E and Dr Y - never met. Is there any way that our system allows them to have a cup of tea with each other - without it being deemed that the Queen is going beyond her world into that of politics? By the way, has the Queen ever been allowed to tea with Mandela?
I-Genius Team
Thursday, May 15, 2008 02:50 AM
Cool, if there is one - please do send it to me, and I will get it up on the site. How many people have signed the petition so far?
Chris Macrae
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:51 PM
I lodged a petition on the BBC at PM's site last August. Almost Brown's first PM job was a rabble rousing talk at the UN on peoplepower - but is the BBC amplifying this call for community empowerment around which human sustainability was forecast to depend by a leading economist 24 years ago? Coincidentally I was part of a team being interviewed about what Yunus is up to on a New York cable tv transmitted from the old UN site now a university. Hope a u-tube version of this will be available in a week..
I-Genius Team
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 02:44 PM
I hope your petition does get approval. Please do update us on that! ; )
Jeff Mowatt
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 05:27 AM
Good to see this here. I've just raised a petition on the Downing Street website, asking the government to augment the Business Call To Action campaign by recognising the efforts and achievement of the smaller scale business whose profits go toward combatting poverty. It awaits approval.
Chris Macrae
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 05:01 AM
When I met Dr Yunus first week of January, I mentioned i-genius as one of the virtual communities yunus citizen forum friends would connect through. We are particularly interested to profile Yunus supporters connections around these 3 questions: A what inspiration would you miss if Yunus did not exist? B Are there any initiatives you are doing or intend to do that are connected with Yunus projects/services towards ending poverty? C any ideas on how supporters of Yunus could collaborate better and help Dhaka, or be helped by Dhaka typical video debriefs on tehse questions : http://www.youtube.com/user/caplinski
Chris Macrae
Monday, May 12, 2008 07:53 PM
Can YUnUS link up the longest quarterly goodwill clutrain ever http://wholeplanet.tv early carriages spotted include: april 21: 10 Downing Street, London May 9 hi-tech robin hoods, hollywood http://robinhood.hhill.org/ May 10 Pangea day: media by & for the people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl3xHIsvF9o May 12 TheGreenChildren (YUnUS pop group) open their first eye hospital in Dhaka http://thegreenchildren.org May 26 world entrepreneur summit network travels to Nairobi to cheerlead Kenya microentrepreneurs and youth http://www.weseastafrica.eventbrite.com/ June 4-11 Liverpool stages Youth world's Big Hope http://www.hope.ac.uk/thebighope/ please add more carriages that make up the same train of celebrating humanity
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