Poor Women’s Angel --- Muhammad Yunus
Sri

Since long time I wanted to read about this man “Muhammad Yunus” to get the very idea of being a successful man in helping a co-human being. Yesterday night I googled his name and found many interesting links about him, as its being middle of the working week I was not able to go through them however I kept them book marked. Just an hour back I quickly opened the saved data and started reading his biography and watched his lecture given at University of California, San Diego, and I could not resist from writing after watching this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvwllE33cy4

Muhammad Yunus born in East Pakistan (Now called Bangladesh) completed his BA and MA degrees from Dhaka University and later did his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. He is well know to the world as the founder of the Grameen Bank and the winner of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

A economic lecturer who was disturbed by seeing the suffering of the poor villagers during the 1974 drought in Bangladesh, He had seen the suffering of the people from the cruel and heartless money lenders and thought of bring change in their lives, along with his student went around the villages and performed a statistics of the amount of money the people had borrowed from the money lender, to his surprise he found out the money to be just 27 dollars, he had repaid the money to the lender’s from his own pocket and started a new era.

Here are some highlights:

  • He convinced the bank to lend money to the poor by giving his property as the security assurance
  • He became successful with his idea of making Women as prime customers of the Grameen Bank
  • There are over 7 and half million customers to Grameen bank and 90% of them are women
  • In order to start a bank, The Grameen bank just gives the address of the village to the bank manager, that’s it! No money…. The manager contacts the local villagers and collects the deposit amounts (Villager’s savings) and starts lending people out of that money
  • Most of the branches had achieved to reach the break even point in just 12 months
  • The main success points for this bank are “No Security assurance required” , “No Legal instruments” (Legal dept and Lawyers)
  • Qualifications to get a loan --- If a family living in a house with a leaking roof they are given the priority or for a family staying in a single room house its considered as the criteria for eligibility to take a loan….. J
  • Grameen bank works with 16 decision rules and the top priority rule is, that the customer should send their children to school
  • Grameen bank is giving 30,000 Scholarships to school children
  • 18,000 students are offered student loans for their graduation
  • There are 2 PhD holders who came from the poor families making their studies possible with the Grameen bank schemes
  • Grameen bank lended loans to beggars and changed many of their lives to small scale entrepreneurs

What Yunus believes…..

  • Poor --- Is not the quality of poor
  • “If you plant a seed in a pot it rises to a small plant, if you plant the same seed in earth it will become a big tree”, all the children are born with great potential, it’s the chance and opportunity we (the society) give the child to grow makes the difference
  • A charity dollar would end up there itself, however a social business dollar forms a cycle and changes many lives

Is it not a great example for a change, a single human being can bring, if he/she thinks of other being with a simple heart and thought to help the co-living being?

2 comments | edit post
Burnings facts about my earth
Sri

Along with the growth in technology we Homo sapiens forgot the basic facts of life.

I would like to present few facts that I had spent some time in collecting regarding our earth and we the Humans behavior towards it, Please spend 5 mins of your time

• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) much of this in recent decades

• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies

• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier.

• Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.

• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting

• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.

• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.

also see

• 20% of the world's population(Developed Nations) consuming the 80% of its resources

• The World spends 12 times more on military expenditures than on aid to developing countries

• 5,000 People a day die because of dirty drinking water

• 1 Billion people have no access to safe drinking water

• Nearly 1 billion people are going hungry

• Over 50% of grain traded around the world is used for animal feed (meat production) or biofuels

• 40% of arable land has suffered long-term damage

• Every year 13 millions hectares of forest disappear

• One Mammal in 4, one bird in 8, one amphibian in 3 are threatened with extinction

• Species are dying out at a rhythm 1,000 times faster than the natural rate

• Three quarters of fishing grounds are exhausted, depleted or in dangerous decline

• The Average temperature of the last 15 years have been the highest ever recorded

• The ice cap is 40% thinner than 40 years ago


There are thousands of facts which are really disturbing,We had created the phenomenon which we cannot control, Since our orgin water, air and forms of life are intimately linked but recently we broke those links and lets face the facts

When ever you have time please watch this documentary "HOME" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU&feature=related, Its really a amazing video which explains clearly about our past, present and future living on Earth.

We hear about global warming and green house effect keywords daily, however we are not paying much attention towards them, for which we may regret in our later years. So please lets try educating ourselves and others with these important stuff.

*** All the above words are hand written and not a copy paste work, which I had collected from NGC and the documentary "Home".

I really thank and appreciate your time, Please spread this important documentary "Home"
4 comments | edit post
A message to spread —Movie “Home”
Sri

This is one of the best documentry I had ever seen till now, Perfectly pictured and clearly shown the facts with detailed location videos.

I am sure this would be really a thought provoking show, which everybody needs to watch and spread the message.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
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