Review
From the book jacket: In 1983 Muhammad Yunus established Grameen, a
bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with miniscule loans. He
aimed to help the poor by supporting the spark of personal initiative and
enterprise by which they could lift themselves out of poverty forever. It was an
idea born on a day in 1976 when he loaned $27 from his own pocket to forty-two
people living in a tiny village. They were stool makers who only needed enough
credit to purchase the raw materials for their trade. Yunus's loan helped them
break the cycle of poverty and changed their lives forever. His solution to
world poverty, founded on the belief that credit is a fundamental human right,
is brilliantly simple: loan poor people money on terms that are suitable to
them, teach them a few sound financial principles, and they will help
themselves.
The...
Beyond the Book
Bangladesh: In 1947 the Partition of India caused the formation of East
and West Pakistan (separated by a distance of about 1,000 miles). Although
the two regions shared a common religion (Islam) large ethnic and linguistic
differences existed which in 1971, following the Bangladesh Liberation War, led
to the formation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) as a country separate from both India and
Pakistan. It is the third largest Muslim-majority nation, and one of the
most densely populated countries in the world; about 147 million people live
in an area about the size of Iowa, with about a third of the land prone to
flooding each year. The infant mortality rate is 61 out of every 1,000
live births, the literacy rate is 43% and the gross...
