Banker to the poor : micro-lending and the battle against world poverty

I enjoyed this so much, and was so inspired that I almost looked into setting up a local mini loan system locally - well I did say almost. If only big business could even take the smallest leaf out of this book it would be beneficial to all.

A first hand take on success stories and pit falls in micro-finance institutions. The books captures Younis's and Grameen Banks spirit very well and does justice to its goal of winning over people to this economic philosophy.

But the book is not very well structured. Goes back and forth while

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discussing ideas and comes out as a some what scattered collection of thoughts. And also towards the end , the attempt to project micro finance as a panacea for all economic issues of the world sounds a bit lame. It depends heavily on emotional appeal and not economic wisdom.

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Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's semi-autobiographical book about his role in creating the Grameen Bank, an organization that lends money to the poorest of the poor in an effort to improve their quality of life. It's easy to see in this book the passion Yunus has for creating a poverty-free

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world and the book chronicles both his sucesses and failures with this kind of grassroots approach to eliminating poverty by way of the Bank. It is a powerful statement of the potential for even the poorest of people to eliminate their own poverty when given the means to do so, and I would recommend this read to anybody who cares about and would do something about widespread poverty around the world.

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Great book. I would love to have a conversation with Mr. Yunus about his journey and the implications of micro-lending in America. My non-economic brain left me re-reading a few passages but overall it was fantastic and well-written!

This book is an amazing account of how microfinancing is enabling the poor and changing the world. It is full of short inspiring real-life stories.
Kudos to Yunus for persevering and breaking the flaws of the current banking system. Now microfinancing is replicated world-over and is benefiting

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people across the globe. If you are curious about the power of microfinancing, this is one book you should read to hear the story from the place where it all originally started...

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Fascinating look at how a professor of economics dealt with poverty in Bangladesh. Towards the middle I was a bit lost with the details as there are many, but once he began to address the issues within the U.S., my interest was renewed. I am surprised after reading this book that I had never heard

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of his work prior to this reading.

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Baffled by a famine his government seemed powerless to stop, Muhammad Yunus strolled through a nearby village to learn about poverty. There he discovered that skilled craftspeople were kept poor by a cycle of inescapable debt. In response, he loaned a total of $27 from his own pocket to a group of

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stool makers, telling them to use it to buy raw materials, sell their goods at the market and pay him back when they could. The idea of micro-credit was born. Thirty years later, the Grameen Bank, the organization that Yunus created, loans billions of dollars to the world's most impoverished citizens. Their innovative programs have helped people who once lived on 2 cents a day buy livestock, build homes and educate their children.

As an economics professor and non-native English speaker, Yunus is not a great writer (although not a terrible one either). He's also got a bit of an attitude, which I suppose is fair for a Nobel prize winner, but it grates a little as you read. These things make the book dry in spots and annoying in others, but at the core is an intensely uplifting story about one effective solution to the seemingly intractable problem of poverty. I wouldn't really recommend this for recreational reading, but people who are interested in banking, finance or international development will probably enjoy it.

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This book was incredibly interesting and really made me question a lot of the concepts and policies I'm learning in my macroeconomics class. It also gave me hope. It's the [true] story of the Grameen bank, which caters specifically to the most impoverished people in the world, and how the bank grew

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from the author lending $27 to people in his town to a million / billion dollar corporation. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to truly help the needy and destitute, anyone who feels like reading a smart book, or anyone who's interested in economics. The only critisism I have would be that the last few chapters sound a little bit communist-like to me, but that's probably just because I'm not a fan of utopianism, but Yunus is. I wanted him to be right about the final chapters, though.

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this is a great book for people who don't want to be bogged down by economic jargon. while there are certainly technical terms in the book, they're relatively few & far between, and yunus manages to keep things anecdotal for the most part. most importantly, it focuses on and drives home

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inequalities such as the 80%-20% paradox (which is now closer to 90%-10%).

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Nobel Prize winner Mohammad Yunus describes how he founded the Grameen Bank and launched the whole micro lending concept. His description of poverty makes it so evident how fortunate we are in the US. Very inspirational!

A good chronological description of the founding and history of Grameen Bank.

An uplifting story about the triumph of love over greed. Many, many organizations leverage micro-lending or micro-credit today and I hope that the philosophies of Grameen continue to grow and seep into cultures around the world. This is a very uplifting and inspiring true story.

Though solidly grounded in the practical applications it still seems somehow idealistic. Yunus covers many examples of expansion or the adaptation of his model in other countries, even the US. I still wonder if the US is too large a country.

Follow up:
bureaucratic waste
Millennium Development Goals

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from the UN
socially conscious entrepreneurship
mentally incapacitated/not able to make their own way?

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