Bulletin No. 2, 2015

Professor Yunus (centre) visits the exhibition on global and local poverty hosted by the University Lecture on Civility operating model. For instance, it offers loans to women living below the poverty line—over 97% of borrowers are women; there is a list of agreements that borrowers have to agree to follow, such as sending children to school, and keeping the environment clean. Professor Yunus also hopes to change society through the development of social enterprises. He formed a venture with a food company to produce yogurt that provides rural children many key nutrients; built solar home systems in Bangladesh; promoted mobile communications in Bangladesh to improve the economy. Professor Yunus doesn’t own any shares in these social enterprises. To him, ‘making other people happy is super-happiness’. He was quite frank about his idea that working for others is very much like slavery. Young people should be job creators not job seekers. ‘People are born to be entrepreneurs. It is a shame if education makes us forget who we were.’ Professor Yunus hopes we will achieve zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero carbon emission soon. One day our children may have to go to museums to see how we once allowed so many fellow human beings to live in poverty. O n 14 October, Prof. Muhammad Yunus , Bengali economist, also known a s ‘ Banke r t o the Poor’, was invited to CUHK by the University L e c ture on Ci v ilit y to share his ideas on tackling poverty on the topic ‘Small Loans for a Big Future’. He i s t he f ound e r o f G r a m e e n B a n k t h a t provides microcredit to the poor without requiring guarantees. It is now one of the biggest commercial banks in Bangladesh. Grameen’s model has been adopted in close to 180 projects in over 100 countries. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. ‘There is no sophisticated rule, principal, guideline to run my programme. I just look at what the conventional banks are doing, and then I just do the opposite,’ Professor Yunus said. ‘They go to the rich, I go to the poor; they go to the men, I go to the women; they need guarantee, I trust everyone; they open in city centres, I go to the villages.’ Professor Yunus noted that offering charity to the poor fails to tackle problems in the long term. It leads to people distancing themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn’t be poor. What he does is change the system and help the poor to unlock their potential and fight for their lives. He is convinced that financial systems could benefit the poor, but we have to change the rules of the game. Grameen Bank is not just a lending institution; it has its own unique Exiling Poverty to the Museum 27