Yunus

Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus will be in Jamaica this week as special guest of Scotia Group Jamaica to deliver the fifth Annual Scotiabank Lecture.

Prof Yunus is founder of the Grameen Bank, which is built on the concept of 'credit as a fundamental right'. Yunus created the bank as a way to making it easier for poor micro and small entrepreneurs to gain access to financing for their ventures, for which he earned the Nobel Prize in 2006.

Poor people's bank

Yunus has also won numerous other awards for his work with the poor. Indeed, Grameen has come to be known as the 'poor people's bank'.

He began by giving small loans to destitute craftsmen in his home country, Bangladesh, in the 1970s, going on to create the Grameen Bank in 1983.

The concept has now spread throughout the world, managed by the Grameen Trust.

Professor Yunus will lecture on the topic: 'Eradicating Poverty through Small and Micro Enterprises' on June 11 at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.