Learn about about a social entrepreneur who helped overcome poverty!

1. POVERTY
A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING
Lim Soong En, Kevin Wong, Yashver Shori, Joshua Tan

2. TITLE AND IMAGE OF SOCIAL
ENTREPRENEUR
Muhammad Yunus

3. INTRODUCTION TO MUHAMMAD
YUNUS
 Traditional banks did not want to make tiny loans at reasonable
interest to the poor due to high risk of default.
 But Muhammad Yunus believed that the poor would repay the
money and hence microcredit was a viable business model.
 Muhammad Yunus lent US$27 of his money to 42 women in the
village, who made a profit of US$0.02 each on the loan.
 Thus, Muhammad Yunus is credited with the idea of microcredit
alongside Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan, founder of the Pakistan
Academy for Rural Development (now Bangladesh Academy for
Rural Development), whom the former greatly admired.

4. INTRODUCTION TO MUHAMMAD
YUNUS
 In December 1976, Yunus finally secured a loan from the
government Janata Bank to lend to the poor in Jobra. The institution
continued to operate, securing loans from other banks for its projects.
 By 1982, it had 28,000 members.
 On 1 October 1983, the pilot project began operation as a full-fledged
bank for poor Bangladeshis and was renamed Grameen Bank
 By July 2007, Grameen had issued US$6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers.
 In the late 1980s, Grameen started to diversify by attending to
underutilized fishing ponds and irrigation pumps like deep tube wells. In
1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate
organizations.

5. IMPACT OF MUHAMMAD YUNUS’S
VENTURE
 Muhammad Yunus developed the principles of the Grameen Bank
(literally, "Bank of the Villages" in Bengali) from his research and
experience. He began to expand microcredit as a research project
together with the Rural Economics Project at Bangladesh's University
of Chittagong to test his method for providing credit and banking
services to the rural poor.
 The Bank continues to expand across the nation. By 2006, Grameen
Bank branches numbered over 2,100. Its success has inspired similar
projects in more than 40 countries around the world, including a
World Bank initiative to finance Grameen-type schemes.

6. IMPACT OF MUHAMMAD YUNUS’S
VENTURE
 The success of the Grameen microfinance model inspired similar
efforts in about 100 developing countries and even in developed
countries including the United States.
 Muhammad Yunus demonstrated how Grameen Social Business
Model can harness the entrepreneurial spirit to empower poor
women and alleviate their poverty
 One conclusion from Yunus' concepts is that the poor are like a
“bonsai tree”, and they can do big things if they get access to the
social business that holds potential to empower them to become
self-sufficient.

7. CREDITS + TEAM NAMES
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus
 Team names:
 Lim Soong En
 Kevin Wong
 Yashver Shorri
 Joshua Tan