Small Loans, Big Dreams : How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World

The stark reality of global poverty—the poorest half of the world s population owns less than one percent of its assets, and that nearly one billion people subsist on less than $1 per day—rarely registers even a ripple in the international media. Western attempts to stem hunger and poverty are often piecemeal and ineffective, applying band aids rather than finding permanent solutions. But Muhammad Yunus, visionary founder of the Grameen Bank, has demonstrated different and more inclusive ways of approaching the problems that confront humanity. In creating Grameen, he turned the conventional wisdom of traditional financial institutions on its head: instead of seeking out wealthy people with collateral and excluding the poor, Yunus sought out the impoverished and excluded the rich. His approach, known as microfinance, has revolutionized global antipoverty efforts. In Small Loans, Big Dreams, Alex Counts presents compelling stories of women benefiting from Yunus s microcredit in rural Bangladesh and urban Chicago. He sets the stage by telling the story of Grameen s founding by Yunus, describing the environments in which Grameen Bank and the Full Circle Fund—a bold effort to apply the same principles in Chicago—and their clients operated. He then recounts the experiences of different borrowers in each country, interspersing them with stories of Yunus, his colleagues, and their counterparts in Chicago. These fascinating accounts not only show the power of the strategy, but also prove that it is no panacea that absolves governments and businesses from their obligation to consider the needs of the poor. Instead, microfinance emphasizes that other sectors think about the implications of its success for their own work—which may be based on flawed assumptions about the poor that the success of microfinance has disproved. Microfinance has the potential to reach truly massive numbers in the years ahead. But in order to grasp future opportunities and challenges, it is essential that people everywhere understand just what it takes to build a large microfinance institution like Grameen Bank, and how this allows for market based poverty reduction through the principle of self help. To that end, this book provides a straightforward, inspiring, and accessible guide.