Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle against World Poverty

In 1983, Muhammad Yunus established Grameen, a bank devoted to providing the poorest of Bangladesh with miniscule loans. Based on the belief that credit is a basic human right, not the privilege of a few, Grameen Bank now provides over 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of Yunus's clients are women, and repayment rates are nearly 100 percent. It was an idea born on a day in 1976 when he loaned $27 from his own pocket to forty-two stool makers living in a tiny village. Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he changed his life to help the world's poor. In it he traces the journey that led him to rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor and recounts the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. Blackstone Audio's narration of Banker to the Poor won an AudioFile Earphones Award (2008) and was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award (2008).