Social Entrepreneurship

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP : MOHAMMAD YUNUS

“Without question, the balance of power on the planet today lies in the hands of business. Corporations rival governments in wealth, influence, and power. Indeed, business all too often pulls the strings of government. Competing institutions-religion, the press, even the military-play subordinate roles in much of the world today. If a values-driven approach to business can begin to redirect this vast power toward more constructive ends than the simple accumulation of wealth, the human race and Planet Earth will have a fighting chance.” -BEN COHEN.

" One Hour video of One single person's speech - who would spend time watching it ? "- was my initial reaction. But the positive responses from my friends instilled a curiosity to watch that video. So how was the 1 hr monotonous video ? Inspirational and Phenomenal. Its like you have a built up a structure of thoughts based on strong conception blocks and this video just pulls one major block, letting all our structures of assumption fall. The concept of Social Business that tends to support the cause of elevating poverty. And A concept that has become successfully proved model. Thanks to Dr. Mandi for engaging us with such awesome videos.

Though the above video, will help you understand his ideology in the best way, Let me summarize the best points for you

* Most local branches are self-funded by deposits of their local members in taka, the Bangladesh national currency.
* By serving as a depository for its members, Grameen Bank allows the poor to build their own financial asset base.
* The bank extends loans to its members at a maximum interest rate of 20 percent, a fraction of what many other microlenders charge.
* Operating on a cooperative model, profits are redistributed to the Grameen Bank’s owner-members or are invested in community projects.

These features root the Grameen Bank in the community it serves and keep money, including interest payments, continuously circulating locally to facilitate productive local exchange and build real community wealth.

Microcredit programs seeking to replicate the Grameen model have spread rapidly across the globe. Most, however, replicate only the loan feature. Few provide their members with depository services or replicate the Grameen Bank’s other defining features, though these features are central to its commitment to community wealth building.

As microlending programs became increasingly focused on repayment rates and growing the size of their loan portfolios, they looked for new sources of capital to expand their reach. With encouragement from foreign philanthropists, many turned to foreign commercial equity investors. Since private equity conflicts with the nonprofit model, sometime around 2005 many nonprofit microcredit programs changed their status to for-profit enterprises and converted their philanthropic nonprofit assets into private for-profit assets.

This social Entrepreneur has not just stopped with this concept. He has extended this concept to Grameen- Danone collaboration to provide good quality yogurt to the poor people and another similar collaboration with Adidas to provide low quality shoes to the poor people. 

These and many such initiatives has led the world to award this gem of a man, the Noble peace prize. May the world produce more such people

"Its not people who are credit worthy, Its banks who are not people worthy" - Mohammad Yunus