Josh Zyderveld
I want to introduce you to one of the most influential and effective people of the 21st century. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for creating a powerful solution to the global tragedy of poverty. His name is Muhammad Yunus, and these are some of his words:
“Poor people are a like bonsai tree, a little tree. You pick the seed of the tallest tree in the forest and take the best seed out of it, and plant it in a flower pot. You get a tiny little tree, we call it a bonsai. Nothing wrong with the seed, you’ve got the best seed possible. Nothing wrong with the tree, because you actually picked the tallest tree in the forest. But actually it grows this far… why? Because we put them in the flower pot. The base. Society is the base. And society is so stingy it doesn’t give the poor people the space to grow. So I say, change the base! If you change the base, anybody will be as tall as anybody else! My belief is poverty is not caused by poor people. Poverty is caused by the system. Poverty is caused by the policies that we pursue.
People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They’re not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. We have created a society that does not allow opportunities for people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities.
I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation. I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over. They explained to me that the bank cannot lend money to poor people because these people are not creditworthy.
Poverty is unnecessary.”
Muhammad Yunus created the ‘microcredit’ concept, and founded the Grameen Bank. As of July 2007, Grameen Bank had issued AU$6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers.
Simply by believing that credit without collateral is a fundamental right of the poor, Muhammad has helped to lift millions of people out of poverty.