Muhammad Yunus wins Nobel Peace Prize

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus


CNN Money
Bangladeshi banker wins Nobel Peace Prize
Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank awarded prestigious prize for lending efforts to very poorest citizens of Bangladesh.

October 13 2006: 7:04 AM EDT
OSLO (Reuters) -- Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname of "banker to the poor."

Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in the 1976 to give credit to the very poorest in his native Bangladesh, particularly women, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral.

In doing so, he invented microcredit, a system that has been copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.

"In Bangladesh, where nothing works and there's no electricity," Yunus once said, "microcredit works like clockwork."

The Nobel committee awarded the prize to Yunus and Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below," it said in its citation.

"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights," it said.

Yunus and Grameen were surprise winners of the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.36 million) award from a field of 191 candidates. The prize will be handed out in Oslo on Dec. 10.

"This is fantastic, unbelievable. Thank you," Yunus, whose autobiography is called "Banker to the Poor," told Norway's NRK television after the announcement.

Returning from a Fulbright scholarship in the United States, Yunus was shocked by the 1974 Bangladesh famine and headed out into the villages to see what he could do.

He discovered the women were in severe debt to extortionate moneylenders, and Yunus's initial aim was simply to persuade a local bank manager to step in and offer the villagers regular credit. The banker said it was impossible without a guarantee.

Yunus set out to prove him wrong and has never looked back. Grameen - the word means village in Bengali - has now disbursed $5.72 billion since its inception. Of this $5.07 billion has been repaid -- a loan recovery rate of 98.85 per cent.

"Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the secretive five-member Nobel committee said in announcing the award.