Was charity the only option?
Not for nothing was Mohammed Yunus, Professor Mohammed Yunus, an economist.
'Look Sophia, I will lend you as much as you need, to get you started. You then repay it to me - without interest or at least a very small amount of interest'.
He smiled. It was a smile of compassion. All those years of intellectual challenges. Of dealing with econometrical analysis, world policy. Session after session of his lectures had been dealing with grandiose 'world' plans to eradicate poverty. And yet, in reality, on the ground, it was all so different.
That loan, of $30, was enough to start Sophia. Yunus did not have to wait long for the return. From this seedling of an idea the Grameen Bank was born. Some 118 million people live on Bangladesh's 55,000 square miles. The annual per capita income is only $210. Every day is a 'hunger jihad' a struggle against hunger.
Sophia had been helped. Dr Yunus lent money to another 40 aspirants. The daily struggle against hunger is the central fact of life for many millions of Bangladeshis. Since this first loan which then led to the Grameen Bank (1976) more than a thousand branches have been opened in rural areas, where nine out of ten Bangladeshis live. The bank now serves almost half of Bangladesh's 68,000 villages, or more than 2 million people.
In 1994 Dr Yunus was World Food Prize Laureate. That was 8 years ago. …
