Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus yesterday received the Congressional
Gold Medal, the highest civilian award of the United States, in
recognition of his efforts toward combating global poverty. Yunus is only the 17th person in history to have won both the
Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, another
of the highest US civilian awards. Yunus won the latter award in 2009.
The achievement places him in the company of Norman Borlaug, Martin
Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Aung San Suu Kyi and Mother
Teresa — personalities who have received the two medals from the US as
well as the Nobel Peace Prize. “Professor Yunus set out to do what may be the biggest thing of all, and
that is liberating people to seek a better life. And not just any
people, but men and women who had only known misery, who had been told
they were no good,” House Speaker John Boehner said during the award
ceremony in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington DC. “To do all this, he first had to teach himself how to run a bank from
scratch. That was when he realised he had to do the exact opposite of
what a bank normally does to make his idea work. Then there was
actually getting people to borrow the money, to see value in themselves,
to spark their sense of wonder. He had to convince them that they too
didn’t need rank or status to advance their place in life,” he said.
House and Senate leaders presented Prof Yunus with the Congressional Gold Medal, which was announced in 2010. “It’s
very emotional. It’s not only an endorsement, but an inspiration for
everybody who has supported us — colleagues and friends, staff and
borrowers of the Grameen Bank, all the people who participate in social
business,” a jubilant Yunus told The New York Times ahead of Wednesday’s
ceremony in Washington DC. “I’m grateful to the US Congress that it paid attention. Many people do
good things that are never recognised. I’m very blessed that way,” he
said, while dedicating the honour to the people of Bangladesh. Yunus is best known for developing the concept of microcredit and using
that model of lending to promote economic and social opportunity. Through his Grameen Bank, Yunus pioneered the movement and helped
hundreds of millions come out of poverty. Today, microfinance providers
reach about 200 million clients globally.
In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank, the first bank in the world owned by
poor women, has 8.4 million borrowers — 96 percent of whom are women. Known as the Banker to the Poor, Yunus has set up many other enterprises
that offer an array of products and services to the poor, to achieve
his lone ambition of eradicating poverty from the world, or, as he likes
to put it, “sending poverty to the museum”. In 2010, the US Senate unanimously approved a bill to award Yunus the
medal, which represents Congress’ highest expression of national
appreciation for distinguished achievement and contribution. Former recipients of the Congressional Gold Medal include George
Washington, Sir Winston Churchill, Elie Wiesel, Pope John Paul II, Rev.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Coretta Scott King. In the next five years, Yunus wants to see at least 1 percent of the world economy made up of social business, his new passion.
“If we can make that 1 percent happen, I think the world will be
completely different. People will see how exciting it is, and soon the
level will rise from 1 to 5 percent and pave the way to 50 percent,” he
told the newspaper. Social business is a non-dividend company dedicated to solving human
problems. It allows the company to make profit, but it stays with the
company. The owner will only get back the original investment, and
nothing more, according to Prof Yunus. He is upbeat about the success of social business, as he was in the case of microcredit. “There’s a whole generation of young people coming up with social
business ideas. Profit making doesn’t interest them as much as it
interested people before, particularly the post-war [Liberation War of
Bangladesh] generation. Their main question is: What am I going to do
with my life? What is the purpose of my life?”
Yunus said once people like the idea of social money, they would start diverting their business money into social businesses. The microcredit pioneer said it was very much possible to eradicate poverty. “With the creative power we have today, this is a do-able proposition.
We can create a world where poverty doesn’t exist. In order for the next
generation to see poverty, we’ll have to create poverty museums. That’s
where poverty belongs, not in human society.” “So let’s put this on the list of impossibilities that we want to make
possible within the next 20 years. That’s the way change takes place,”
he told the New York Times.
Source: The Daily Star
