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Muhammad Yunus
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Global X has had many chats with Muhammad Yunus, but most of the time when the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate was talking to other interesting people, such as Peter Gabriel, Pamela Hartigan, Vera Cordeiro, Rachel Payne, Sakena Yacoobi or Albina Ruiz.
Global X even met his daughter Monica Yunus, a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera in New York who sang in French just for him (and a few thousand other people): a piece from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. Her French was very good, thought Global X at that time.
At last, a few weeks ago, Global X had a chance to sit down with the Professor to have a little chat. Just the two of them (and a movie crew).
Global X, for once, was mesmerized and actually became speechless. Listen to Professor Yunus as he tells the story of the first US$27 loan in a village of Bangladesh, the loan that launched the microfinance movement. Watch him as he recalls how surprised he was that it took so little money to free village women from modern-day slavery, humiliation and torture.
Disucssion of Mohammed Yunus ideas online and at grass-roots in Kenya
I was interested to find this video here. I first heard Muhammad Yunus when he was a speaker at the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship (here in the UK) and more recently, in London, where he was promoting his latest book “Creating a World Without Poverty”, which I bought.
Subsequently Chris Macrae made some copies freely available for people willing to start book clubs to study the ideas in the book. As a result I was able to pass on six copies to friends in Kenya and we are starting a rather unusual study group, which is lead by Ken Owino (in Kenya) in collaboration with me (on the Internet). Ken is a Kenyan acrobat, artist, peace activist and independent thinker. He has a great social network, especially amongst people who are underprivileged.
Our discussions on the Internet are through Minciu Sodas (MS). We have a WWP (World Without Poverty) thread on the MS LearningFromEachOther (LFEO)group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningfromeachother/ We also use the Minciu Sodas chatroom. Ken is the link between the Internet group and the study groups, on the ground, in Kenya. He plans to arrange several groups, with the leaders keeping in touch by mobile phone. This means input from their groups can be included in the online discussions, through Ken, even if the leaders cannot afford the time and/or money to get to a cybercafe to go online.
Each group will have at least one copy of the book, and it will be the leader's responsibility to share the ideas with the participants. It is fine that there are not enough copies of the book for everyone to have one, as the people we want to come to the study groups are largely unemployed youths, and other people who have had little formal education. They are not part of a book-reading culture and most do not speak English as their first language.
If anyone would like to join our discussions please join the LFEO group, or to find out more contact me pam54321@googlemail.com