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Banker Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Muhammad Yunus and the bank he founded are honored for their work to help the world’s poor.Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.They won the award for their efforts to help bring millions of people, especially women, out of poverty.
“Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life.Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development,”the Nobel Committee said in its citation.
The Peace Prize is one of the biggest honors in the world.Yunus is the first Nobel Prize winner from Bangladesh, a nation of about 141 million people.In 1983, Yunnus and the Grameen Bank started a now worldwide system that lets people borrow small amounts of money to start businesses.Through these loans, called“microcredit”, the world’s poor have been able to buy much needed things like cows to start a dairy, chickens to run an egg business, or a cell phone in places where there is no other access to a phone.
Yunus said he would use part of the $ 1.4 million award money to create a company that will make low-cost, high-nutrition food for the poor.The rest of his share will go toward setting up an eye hospital for the poor in Bangladesh.“I am so, so happy, it’s really great news for the whole nation,”Yunus said after hearing of his win.
Since the bank began, it has lent $ 5.72 billion to more than 6 million Bangladeshis.About 97 percent of the borrowers are women.
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