Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, and a verifiable credit history. It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled nearly US$40 billion. Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent. The first economist who had invented the idea of microloans was Jonathan Swift in the 1720s. Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts, to the poor. Modern microcredit is generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank founded in Bangladesh in 1983 by their current Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus. Many traditional banks subsequently introduced microcredit despite initial misgivings. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit. As of 2012, microcredit is widely used in developing countries and is presented as having "enormous potential as a tool for poverty alleviation."
Grameen Bank is a microfinance, specialized community development bank founded in Bangladesh. It provides small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral.
Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist, entrepreneur, politician, and civil society leader, who has been serving as Chief Adviser of the Interim Government of Bangladesh since 8 August 2024. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. Yunus has received several other national and international honors, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010. Yunus is one of only seven people in the world to have received all of these awards.
North South University is a private research university in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was established in 1992 under the Private University Act, 1992 by the then Foundation for Promotion of Education and Research (FPER), a charitable, non-profit, non-commercial and non-political organization. The FPER later was renamed as the NSU Foundation and is presently called The North South Foundation for Education and Research.
Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty is an autobiography of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. The book describes Yunus' early life, moving into his college years, and into his years as a professor at Chittagong University. While a professor at Chittagong University, Yunus began to take notice of the extreme poverty of the villagers around him. In 1976, Yunus incorporated the help of Maimuna Begum to collect data of people in Jobra who were living in poverty. Most of these impoverished people would take a loan from moneylenders to buy some raw material, using that raw material to create some product, and then selling back the good to the moneylender to repay the loan, earning a very meager profit. One 21-year-old woman, Sufia Begum, who was interviewed, earned no more than two cents per day making bamboo stools under this system.The list Begum brought back to Yunus named 42 women who were living on credit of 856 taka.
Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed also known as Sajeeb Wazed Joy is a Bangladeshi businessman and politician. He is a member of the Bangladesh Awami League and served as an advisor to his mother, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on information and communication technology affairs. He is known as "গান্জাখোর" to Bangladeshi people.
The Grameen family of organizations has grown beyond Grameen Bank into a multi-faceted group of both commercial and non-profit ventures. It was first established by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder of Grameen Bank. Most of the organizations in the Grameen group have central offices at the Grameen Bank Complex in Mirpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank started to diversify in the late 1980s when it began attending to unutilized or underutilized fishing ponds, as well as irrigation pumps like deep tubewells. In 1989, these diversified interests started growing into separate organizations, as the fisheries project became Grameen Fisheries Foundation and the irrigation project became Grameen Krishi Foundation.
The Yunus Centre, in Dhaka, Bangladesh is a think tank for issues related to social business, working in the field of poverty alleviation and sustainability. It is 'aimed primarily at promoting and disseminating Professor Yunus' philosophy, with a special focus on social business'. As of 2023 it is chaired by Prof. Muhammad Yunus, and its executive director is Ms. Lamiya Morshed.
Yunus Social Business (YSB) is a non-profit organisation with an impact-investing arm, Yunus Funds, and a corporate social-innovation consulting arm, Yunus Corporate Innovation. Both business units are based on furthering the concept of social business.
A. Y. B. I. Siddiqi, also known as Burhan Siddiqi, was a Bangladeshi diplomat and police officer who served as the 16th Inspector General of Police of Bangladesh Police during 1998–2000. He also played active roles in diplomatic and UN missions, having served as the Chief Liaison Officer for UNTAG in Namibia (1989–1990) and the Acting High Commissioner of Bangladesh.
Tabarak Husain was a former Bangladeshi career diplomat. He was foreign secretary of Bangladesh from 1975 to 1978. He also held the position of chairman of Sadharan Bima Corporation and Grameen Bank.
Salehuddin Ahmed is a Bangladeshi economist, civil servant, and a former governor of the Bangladesh Bank, the country's central bank. He is a professor of BRAC University. He has been serving as an adviser to the interim government of Bangladesh since August 2024.
Hafiz G. A. Siddiqi was a Bangladeshi academic. He served as the vice-chancellor of North South University and the director of Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka.
Wahiduddin Mahmud is an economist from Bangladesh. He has been serving as an adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh since 16 August 2024. He is a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Policy. He was in charge of the Ministry of Finance and Planning in the caretaker government of Bangladesh in 1996.
Nurjahan Begum is an advisor to the 2024 Bangladesh interim government.
Khan Ahmed Sayeed Murshid, also known as Dr KAS Murshid, is a Bangladeshi researcher and former director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. He is a director of Prime Bank.
Faruq Ahmad Siddiqi is a retired secretary and former Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. He is a former tax policy member of the National Board of Revenue.
Simeen Mahmud was a demographics researcher and the lead researcher at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development at BRAC University. She was a director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. She was the coordinator of the Centre for Gender and Social Transformation of BRAC University. She headed the Gender Studies Cluster at BRAC University.
A. M. Anisuzzaman was a government secretary and member of the Shahabuddin Ahmed ministry in charge of the Ministry of Land and the Ministry of Agriculture. He was a special advisor for agriculture to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. He was a former secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture.
