A combination of a desire to help, an organized system, and a growing technology made Muhammad Yunus known and appraised throughout the century due to his success in business industry. He is the father of microfinance in Bangladesh that brought much prosperity not only to the poorest class of the people but to the nation itself as well.
His desire to help his poor people started when he observed the devastating effect of the famine and flood to some parts of the Bangladesh in 1974. That happened just three years after the Bangladesh Liberation War, which also resulted to the unstable government and nation. During this time, he observed that the poor, the laborers, and the non-landowners were the ones who were greatly affected. Even though there were many among them who had work, much of them were still had to take usurious loans to finance their small businesses. The traditional banks were also unwilling to lend these poor Bangladeshis due to fear of default.
These concerns led Muhammad Yunus to create the microfinance in Bangladesh. At first, he lent US $27 of his money to 42 women in the village, who in return made a profit of US $ 0.02 each on the loan. From that single beginning in 1976, microfinance grew into having 28,000 members in 1982. A full-fledged bank for the poor Bangladeshis, the Grameen Bank, was created. By July 2007, it supplied US $6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers.
Handling a growing company was not easy, especially for Muhammad Yunus. As what was really in demand at that time, he also used the technology to address the needs of his members in the microfinance and to reach out to those who are living farther.
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