Imagine a time in the future where people could one day walk into a museum with their children and look at a display of homelessness and destitution. Looking at the display would prompt our children to ask us, how we could have ever allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long. The total eradication of poverty from the world. This is the dream of Muhammad Yunus, the Winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, which also went to Garmeen Bank (“village bank”), which he started in 1976 with $27 from his own pocket. Today it serves more than six million poor families with loans, savings, insurance. It has also become the source of ideas and models for the many institutions in the field of micro-credit that have sprung up around the world.

Muhammad Yunus, who was born in 1940 in Chittagong, the business centre of what was then known as Eastern Bengal, was educated on a scholarship from Fulbright and received his Ph.D. from Vanderbelt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Since 1972 he headed the Economics Department at Chittagong University and in 1997, he led the world’s first Micro Credit Summit in Washington, DC. Through his work to create economic and social development from below, particularly through Microfinance, he has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people.

Join Mohammad Yunus, Sampoerna Foundation
and special guests for the
Sampoerna’s Distinguished Speakers Series
Friday, August 10, 2007
at Hotel Mulia (Gebera Function Room)
to learn more about improving the access to education and finance through private-public partnership. Be inspired by this visionary “Banker to the Poor”.