Tuesday, November 06, 2007

 

An Innovative Idea: Grameen Bank and Microcredit

For the English 201 class, I had you read the article: "Turning Poverty into
Peace" about Muhammad Yunnus, founder of Grameen Bank, an institution which lends money to poor people. Students are to respond to the article here. Keep in mind the following questions:

How is Muhammad Yunnus a social entrepreneur? How is Yunnus' work used as an extended analogy to talk about the key idea of this article? What is the point here? It is repeated minimally 4 times.

Where does the conclusion start? The key point is repeated here one last time. What is that point?

What references are sited to prove the writers' point? List them.

The authors also give other references to organizations whose development went through similar phases as did Grameen Bank. List them.

What did you like most stylistically about the writing? If you had to answer the question: what was the author's purpose and what question did the writers want this article to answer, how would you answer?

(Muhammad Yunnus is on the the SE profiled in Frontline World. Tonight on FW they will be looking at the CIA and its secret interrogations on Channel 9, 10 p.m.)

We'll meet in the classroom tomorrow. We will review the evaluation of a website questionnaires. If you had any trouble, drop by the reference desk. I want all the questions answered.

Keep reading Afeni. We are up to Chapter 4 1/2 for Wednesday-Thursday, November 6-7 for Tuesday, November 13 read up to Chapter 7. Don't forget the logs.

Comments:
Turning poverty into peace

Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank have gone through hard stages that every innovative idea faced. However, 30 years later, microcredit has expanded into the success story in poverty area and the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yunus and his Grameen Bank finally.
“If you want to solve poverty, you have to put people in a position to build their own life.” The sentence from the article showed Muhammad Yunus’s gist of innovative idea well. Contrary to philanthropic support or a governmental grant, ‘microcredit’, the system he devised to extend small loans so the poor could start their own business, had misunderstood and attacked a lot.
What I like about the idea of microcredit was that “The breakthrough of microcredit offers hope” to the needy. Even Yunus suffered for a certain incubation period of microcredit idea, his belief to solve poverty fundamentally by giving the opportunity of build their own life seemed to harvest a lot. Also, it gives people in poverty the chance of hoping all the other ideas, initiatives and groundbreaking visions. He is one of the persistent and successful social entrepreneurs.
To prove writer’s point, writer sited the references of Ditto for women’s, Mahatma Gandhi’s saying, and Malcome Gladwell’s discussion in The tripping Point.
The authors also give other references to organizations whose development went through similar phases as did Grameen Bank such as new education system of Netherlands, fuel-cell and solar panels, and hydrogen economy.
 
Muhammad Yunnus was a young visionary who had an idea, implemented it and later became successful. The key idea of this article is the process of an innovative idea from the early stages until it reaches success. For Yunnus, his idea was born over 30 years ago when he decided to lend small amounts of money from his own pocket, to now running an empire, which stems from the Grameen Bank. The point is that there are stages that a new idea must endure in order to reach success. The beginning of the conclusion revisits the key point that new ideas want to be realized.

The writer references Arthur Schopenhauer who agreed with the idea that all ideas have to go through certain stages. She also references the Grameen Bank and other micro-financing institutions when stating that the power of an idea has proven. Grameen and the other institutions validated their idea when 98 percent of loans were repaid on time, which far exceeds the percentage of other financial institutions.

Triodos Bank, Henry Ford, and Twentieth Century Fox are all companies whose development went through a similar process that the Grameen Bank experienced.

I like the fact that the writer really explored the issue and gave validation to Grameen’s success with many references. The author’s purpose was to show the readers the process that new ideas have to go through to receive validation. The question that the article sought to answer was: What criteria does a new idea and its creator have to satisfy to get through to the established order? My answer would be that both the idea and the creator have to provide sufficient evidence to prove the predicted success of the idea.
 
Proposing any innovative idea to millions and millions of critics, and chanllengers that the world is faced with is going to get toosed and turn with the disbelief of nonbelievers. this was a hughe ground that Muhammad Yunus had to face when dealing with his innovative idea that if you lend the needy that will be the most likely to pay you back. However his system of microcredit was not proved untill thirty years later followed by success and a nobel peace prize. This system that he found was a system that made small loans availaable to those sufferring poverty who wanted to help build their own life. consisting of starting their own bussiness.

I like the interity that Yunus had. Although he was faced with multiple challenges he was persisitant, and reached the goal that he had in mind. including some!
 
Ashley Dorsett
11/14/2007
Muhammad Yunus is a social entrepreneur because he gave back to his community to prove that if you give money to anyone hard working they will pay you back. His key ideas as he stated was to innovative an idea until it reaches success he preaches this to us through the reading over and over. And 30 years later he is a “celebrated” man for Microcredit, and was awarded with a Nobel Peace Prize. His idea of the Grameen Bank gave larger banks the idea to lend money to poorer countries. The point that they wanted us to see was new ideas.

Other organizations that went through the same thing were New Education System of Netherlands, Fuel-Cell and solar panels and Hydrogen economy. The conclusion is when Yunus talks about “New Ideas want to be realized”. As everyone stated yes he was persistent and he reached more goals than he thought because of his “ideas”.
 
Fred Yunus was a 34-year-old man who had a dream for helping the poor. He leant money to the poor and let them pay him back when they where able to. He started a bank called the Grameen Bank that gives small loans to the poor people to help them start their own businesses. Grameen Bank has done so well that Yunus was awarded the Nobel peace prize. In order for Yunus to have gotten this far he had to endure success by going through three stages, first being ridiculed, second its violently opposed, third its accepted and embraced as self-evident. Also to be recognized or maybe win a Nobel peace prize u would have to go through other stages as Gandhi said, “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Triodos bank, twentieth century fox, and Henry Ford were companies that went through a process similar to the Gameen bank. Overall Yunus proved his idea would be a success, that 98% of the loans were paid back, and it was financially profitable. I liked that Yunus Believed in himself even though nobody else did and he proved that if u want something done you have to work hard and show people how to accomplish a dream no matter how hard it may be.
 
One if the social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus because he helped the poor people of his community by giving them money to start any kind of small business and they pay it whenever they earn. His key idea of this article is the process of an innovative idea from the early stages until it reaches success. And also he was awarded with a Nobel peace prize. He started to run an empire called Grameen Bank which gave larger banks the idea to lend the money to poorer countries. And the key point is that the new ideas want to be realized. Not only Grameen Bank but other institutions also went on same field and they validated their idea when 98% of loans were repaid on time.

The most interesting is that Muhammad Yunus listen to nobody, just believed on his ideas and went through and got success. The conclusion is that the new ideas want to be realized.
 
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