Ebook: Banker to the Poor: The Story of the Grameen Bank

Muhammad Yunus set up the Grameen Bank in his home country of Bangladesh with a loan of just £17, to lend tiny amounts of money to the poorest of the poor - those to whom no ordinary bank would lend. Most of his customers - as they still are - were illiterate women, wanting to set up the smallest imaginable village enterprises. It was his conviction that this new system of 'micro-credit', lending even such small sums, would give such people the spark of initiative needed to pull themselves out of poverty. Today, Yunus's system of micro-credit is practised around the world in some.;Cover; Title page; Dedication; Epigraph; Contents; Acknowledgements; Illustrations; Foreword by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales; Author's Preface; PART I: BEGINNINGS 1940-76; 1 Jobra Village: from Textbook to Reality; 2 The World Bank, Washington, DC, November 1993; 3 20 Boxirhat Road, Chittagong; 4 Through the Viewfinder: Boyhood Passions; 5 Campus Years in the US, 1965-72; 6 Marriage and the War of Liberation, 1967-71; 7 Chittagong University, 1972-74; 8 Farming: the Three-Share Farm Experiment, 1974-76; 9 Banking: Climbing the Prison Walls of Collateral, 1976.