Who is a Social Entrepreneur

Who are social entrepreneurs?

Social entrepreneurs are people who drive social innovation and transformation in various fields including education, health, environment and enterprise development. They pursue poverty alleviation goals with entrepreneurial zeal, business methods and the courage to innovate and overcome traditional practices.

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are often ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. One of such is Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Founder of Grameen Bank, in Bangldesh

Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus was born on 28th of June, 1940 in the village of Bathua , Bangladesh. He was the 3rd of 14 children of whom five died in infancy. His father was a successful goldsmith, but his biggest influence was his mother , who always helped the poor people. This inspired him to commit himself to eradication of poverty.

This opportunity came in 1974, when Professor Muhammad Yunus led his students on a field trip to a poor village and discovered that some poor people operate their businesses through borrowed money and on paying back this money with interests, they are left with no profit. This made him to take matters into his own hands and from his own pocket lent some money to basket weavers in that village.

The Grameen Bank

Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out ‘micro-loans’, and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning ‘village bank’ founded on principles of trust and solidarity. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, due to Yunus’ belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.

In Bangladesh today, Grameen has 2,564 branches, with 19,800 staff serving 8.29 million borrowers in 81,367 villages. On any working day Grameen collects an average of $1.5 million in weekly installments. Of the borrowers, 97% are women and over 97% of the loans are paid back, a recovery rate higher than any other banking system.

Today, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending and replicas of its model now operate in more than 100 countries worldwide, including the US, Canada, France, The Netherlands and Norway.

References

http://www.grameen-info.org/grameen-founder-muhammad-yunus/

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/yunus-bio.html

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