A few years ago a friend told me to read a book that was going to change my vision of the world. The book he was referring to was ‘The bank of the poors‘ by Muhammed Yunus, 2006 Nobel Price. I have a good sociology background and reading this book was almost like going back to uni. After a few days, when I finished the book, I realized that I was in front of a real revolution. I couldn’t stop there, so I bought the second book of Mr Yunus, I joint their group and I started following their projects even more closely. So engaging! Mr Yunus founded the Grameen Foundation with the mission to enable the poor, especially the poorest, to create a world without poverty, and the Grameen Bank is the tool to do this.

(Wiki) ‘The Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community development bank started in Bangladesh that makes small loans (known as microcredit) to the impoverished without requiring collateral. The system of this bank is based on the idea that the poor have skills that are under-utilized. A group-based credit approach is applied which utilizes the peer-pressure within the group to ensure the borrowers follow through and use caution in conducting their financial affairs with strict discipline, ensuring repayment eventually and allowing the borrowers to develop good credit standing. The bank also accepts deposits, provides other services, and runs several development-oriented businesses including fabric, telephone and energy companies. Another distinctive feature of the bank’s credit program is that the overwhelming majority (98%) of its borrowers are women’. This decision has many reasons behind, 2 of those are that women with a loan are in general in a stronger position to ensure children’s access to food, schooling, and medical care and second, women with a loan are less likely to be beaten at home by their husband.

I could stay here for hours, or probably days, talking about how this project became succesfull and spread around the world becoming the leader in the fight against poverty in Sub Saharan Africa, Asia, Middle East/North Africa, and the Americas
and why I really think that this is the real way out.

Find out more about it here, there are lots of ways to help if you want