BeyondGenius.com

Every year the Nobel people award a peace prize; this year the award went to one Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank. Now, there are a number of things that have been said about this year’s winner: that he’s a worthy man, that he’s helped millions, that he has made the world a better place. He’s a visionary, a saint, and a brilliant economist. There have also been suggestions made that the Peace Prize has lost it’s purpose, that it is now little more than a marketing tool, that it’s no longer about peace and is now about just doing some sort of good, and that it should have been withheld this year.

Now, there’s no argument I can make about the fact that the prize seems to rotate continents, and that certainly there is a strong marketing aspect to the prize. However, I do stand by the idea that Yunus deserves a prize that is specifically about peace. Grameen Bank, though it’s about economics is also overwhelmingly about peace.

Grameen, for those not familiar, was the first company to explore the world of microcredit. People in the developing world live on less than a few dollars per day; in some places, the average monthly wage is in the neighborhood of $15 US. Businesses are unable to form for want of capital – sometimes pitifully small capital. Yunus has created a system that allows loans that most institutions wouldn’t be able to profit from: loans of tens of dollars, rather than tens of thousands. Loans are made mostly to women (as they are more likely to actually put the loans into businesses to feed themselves and their children), both lifting individuals out of poverty and strengthening the positions of women in Bangladesh. It promotes both the reduction of poverty and women’s rights…which in turn makes for a more stable populace. The more stable populace is less likely to engage in criminal activity, lowering strife and promoting peace.

Since Yunus pioneered microcredit, his efforts have been duplicated all over the world. Microcredit institutions exist in places as far flung as Bulgaria, Uruguay, and Nicaragua. Millions of people have been able to create and build small businesses and employ others. (And in case you care, Yunus reports his repayment rate at 95%). He is, in fact, a man who has made the world a better place, and a more peaceful place.