Long overdue applies partially to this blog post but also, and more importantly, to the announcement last month that Professor Mohammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank (which Yunus founded) have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Those of us working in the field of microfinance could not possibly be more excited, thrilled, or whatever other superlative you’d like to apply.
The morning of the announcement I was driving into work and happened to flip on NPR along the way and dropped into a story about women getting small loans to help them get out of poverty and thought “cool, NPR is doing a story on microfinance” and then heard “the Nobel committee said…” and completely freaked out. Literally. I had to pull of the road, into the parking lot at Gasworks Park, and call Eli to see if she could confirm what I somehow put together… that Yunus had just won the Nobel freaking Prize. And beyond that, it was the Peace prize… not the prize for economics that I suspected.
Yunus and Grameen Bank are the heritage and inspiration of my current gig, Grameen Foundation… he’s a founding member of our Board and basically the reason we exist. More on various aspects of this to come but for now, how about this image… one of the most delightful pictures I think I’ve ever seen in my life. He, too, is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met - and also, btw, has had one of the deepest impacts ever on the world around us…
