Muhammad Yunus Audio & Video

In 2006, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.

In 1983 Muhammad Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with miniscule loans. He aimed to help the poor by supporting the spark of personal initiative and enterprise by which they could lift themselves out of poverty forever.

Nobel laureate and bestselling author (Banker to the Poor, Creating a World without Poverty) Muhammad Yunus looks more deeply into the concept of social business, an alternative to capitalism that channels the best energies of capitalism while addressing pressing human needsand shows how the theory and practice of this idea is growing in the business, academic and philanthropic worlds.

While free markets have swept the globe and brought positive change, nevertheless traditional capitalism cannot solve problems of inequality and poverty because of its view of people as one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit.

Imagine a bank that loans money based on a borrower’s desperate circumstances -- where, as Muhammad Yunus says, “the less you have, the higher priority you have.”

Muhammad Yunus delivered his Nobel Lecture on 10 December 2006 at the Oslo City Hall, Norway.

Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, presents a new, U.S.-based micro-credit program aimed at helping the poor and immigrants launch their own businesses.

Microfinancing pioneer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus shares the story of a bank that defies convention by lending small sums of money to the very poor.