Professor Muhammad Yunus

Another problem Professor Yunus discovered was that people in Bangladesh have poor sanitation.  Professor Yunus made the covering of faeces by digging holes an eligibility requirement for joining the Grameen Bank and so sanitary practices were improved and this became standard practice.

In the provision of electric supply Yunus initiated a business to improve the service. The aim is to ensure that every home has the hygienic standards provided by electric sanitary. But 70% of Bangladeshis have no electricity, so he looked at solar panels. But experts said it is not for Bangladesh and disregarded it. However, Professor Yunus insisted.

Professor Yunus argued that solar panels were needed for the entire country. By promoting solar panels for the entire Bangladesh population, they had to overcome buyer resistance. But now Grameen energy sells 1000 solar energy systems every year. It took only 7 years to have 1.5 million houses with solar energy systems.

Economic theorists, assume human beings want to make money. Theories are supposed to reflect on what we do. But in reality, theory has decided what we should be. All organisations focus on maximising profits. The more money you make, the more successful you are. Humans are multi-dimensional, free and selfless, and this can also be shown in business dealings.

Professor Yunus called his business a social business aiming to help people, and unlike philanthropist’s money for business initiatives where the money comes back to investors. This money becomes the biggest incentive in the world to the person/s in receipt, but it’s not the only incentive. However, money can be identified as making most people happy. But making other people happy is even better.

Grameen bank encourages children to go to school and pursue higher education. But once they reach that stage students then complain of being unemployed. ‘Who told you that you must have a job? Getting a job is a pre-historic idea, prepare yourself to be a job giver rather than a job seeker. Be an entrepreneur!’ Through such strategies Grameen Bank will assist youth to set up a business and work together; to avoid so much unemployment in the world.

Unemployment is a feature of a system that has rejected individual skills and abilities. The system relies on someone else to make the decision over an individual getting the job. One may ask:  why not me? Shouldn’t I make the decision of my life? These systems create conditions such as poverty, diseases, environmental hazards, inflation etc…

The concept of a Social Business questions the prevailing system. Poverty is not created by the poor, but by the system itself. Professor Yunus compared poor people to a Bonsai plant, where the plant doesn’t have base like the forest. There is nothing wrong with the seed, but with the base.

Social Businesses are designed to solve this problem. They encourage using the capacity of creators (current generation) as decision makers, not the ones taking orders. Even you can do something to avoid poverty. Unemployment is artificially imposed. We should create a world without unemployment and we will find that it is safer.

‘Imagine the world you want, not the possibility.’

Awards

Apart from the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, Professor Muhammad Yunus has received many prestigious awards from around the world, for example, the ‘Independence Day Award’ in 1987, World Food Prize in 1994, Volvo Environment Prize in 2003, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the ‘Congressional Gold Medal’ in 2010, along with being presented with over 50 Honorary Doctorates from Universities around the world.

People with disabilities in Australia

As a disabled and researcher of people with disabilities, I could not be more overjoyed by attending this phenomenally passionate and inspirational lecture concerning microcredit and its flow on effects. People with severe disabilities are among our most impoverished, due to their low and unsustainable socio-economic status. Do Professor Yunus’s pragmatic theories offer any sustainable answers for people with severe disabilities?