1. Group Titus:
Poverty
Team members: Tang Kai Xue, Joseph How,
Titus Lee, Timothy Kan

2. Introduction to Mr Muhammad Yunus
Mr Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur,
banker, economist, and civil society leader who was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and
pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance.
These loans are given to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for
traditional bank loans. In 2006, Yunus and the Grameen Bank
were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts
through microcredit to create economic and social
development from below. Muhammad Yunus and Grameen
Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work
to bring about their own development. Yunus has received
several other national and international honours. He received
the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009
and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.

3. Muhammad Yunus’ early years
The third of nine children, Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 to a
Bengali Muslim family in the village of Bathua. His father was Hazi
Dula Mia Shoudagar, a jeweler, and his mother was Sufia Khatun who
would always help the poor whenever they knocked on the door.This
helped inspired Yunus to become what he is today.
His early childhood was spent in the village. During his school years,
he was an active Boy Scout, and traveled to West Pakistan and India
in 1952, and to Canada in 1955 to attend Jamborees.Later while
Yunus studied at Chittagong College, he became active in cultural
activities and won awards for drama.In 1957, he enrolled in the
Department of Economics at Dhaka University and completed his BA
in 1960 and MA in 1961.
Mr Yunus as a boy scout in
1953

4. What inspired Muhammad Yunus to start his venture?
As he said “In terms of poverty, of welfare recipients, of housing problems, water problems,
in terms of healthcare problems. These are common problems, rich country or poor
country. Australia has poor people, America has poor people, Europe has poor
people.” Everyone everywhere has the same kind of issues.“Young people have to know
about it. They should learn that there are two kinds of businesses in the world. One is a
business which makes money, and the other solves the problems of the world. It’s an
academic exercise and what they do with that in real life will depend on them, what kind of
life they would like to choose.” He wanted everyone to be at a right place of not being poor
which could end up in Poverty and have enough wealth that could cater for themselves daily.

5. HISTORY AND IMPACT OF MUHAMMAD YUNUS’S VENTURE
To him, Poverty means being deprived of all human value. He regards micro-
credit both as a human right and as an effective means of emerging from poverty:
Lend the poor money in amounts which suit them, teach them a few basic
financial principles, and they generally manage on their own.When Bangladesh
suffered a famine in 1974, he felt that he had to do something more for the poor
beyond simply teaching in the university he was currently teaching at. He decided
to give long-term loans to people who wanted to start their own small
enterprises.Initially he started by personally lending small amounts of money to
the poor in Jobra village 1976. Then he sought support from the Central
Bangladesh Bank to extend micro-credit facilities to other places as well. The
project was surprisingly successful immensely successful.

6. Credits of sources
Slide 2 and 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus#cite_note-Nobel-2
Slide 4 and 5: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2006/yunus/facts/
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/muhammad-yunus-2412.php
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/29/we-are-all-
entrepreneurs-muhammad-yunus-on-changing-the-world-one-microloan-at-a-
time