Though Rome is a comparatively small city, its proximity to Atlanta and the commitment of its town leadership uphold its advantages. A prime example of this was the recent visit of Dr. Mohammed Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to the City Hall auditorium to give a lecture on innovative ways to end poverty.
The lecture was well-attended, hosting a considerable diversity of ages and backgrounds, and Dr. Yunus received three separate standing ovations during his time at City Hall and the mayor of Rome awarded him a key to the city.
Dr. Yunus is known as the “father of microfinance” and has done considerable work with regard to a variety of anti-poverty initiatives. He holds an earned doctorate degree from Vanderbilt University (though he has over 50 honorary degrees), and has been featured on the covers of both Newsweek and Time magazines. Yunus was born in Bangladesh in 1940, and his native country has been the epicenter of his humanitarian work.
It should be noted that Yunus began his lecture by providing the audience with the context that birthed his now-famous ideas for micro-financing, or providing funds to impoverished people without requiring collateral. Specifically, he told of how, upon earning his doctorate and returning to Bangladesh, he experienced inner turmoil from witnessing the contrast of the ideas for advancement he had been presented with in academia and the destitution of famine and poverty that surrounded him.
In reaction to this, he decided to look first at how he could simply “be useful to another person,” and from there he began to loan money to poor women without demanding collateral; it would be some time before banks would support Yunus’ enterprise.
When recalling his pivotal inspiration, Yunus said that he realized “I cannot solve the problems of the whole world, but I can solve the problems for these few people.”
And by helping a few people, Yunus was able to set in motion an initiative that would rapidly expand throughout the world. In fact, Yunus’ system of supporting the entrepreneurship of underprivileged women, epitomized in his Grameen Bank, has been used around the world, including in the United States. He claims that some of the characteristics that make his ideas successful in practice include the way micro-financing provides a sustainable flow/circulation of money for social betterment and its focus on transparency.
Moreover, Yunus has been intentional in his attempts to affect change in the face of other global issues, including the access to clean water, unemployment and child malnutrition.
In his own words, he said “every time I see a problem, I try to solve the problem with a business,” noting that enterprise can be integral in addressing social issues if it is approached correctly. He then went on to declare that an imperative part of this rather novel, socially-conscious approach is not seeking personal profit.
In short, he encouraged everyone to look beyond conventional norms to solve problems, and expressed the substantial hope he had for the upcoming generation, saying it islikely “the most powerful in human history. The advice I give is to be aware of the power you have and use it.”
