Discussion board - Assignment Example

Grameen Bank Project At the onset it can be mentioned that poverty is a royal curse on human beings as it deprives them of their fundamental rights and prevents them from fulfilling even the basic needs like food for hunger. It denies people their deserved dignity, prevents them from using their full capacity thus depriving them from becoming participatory citizens for development of their own countries. Poverty exists in every country of this world, hence eradication of poverty is a demand of global justice and this kind of global demand must be incorporated into all areas of human approaches towards economic development.

Serving the poor is an ethical issue and should be done by everyone as response to humanity. A major and most tragic manifestation of poverty is hunger as described by Mohammad Yunus in his book Banker to the Poor. In 1974, famine struck Bangladesh and Yunus wrote about his experiences of witnessing agricultural lands left uncultivated due to lack of irrigation technological awareness among the villagers. He described the scenario in Bangladesh as hungry people multiplied every day, “Hungry people were everywhere.

Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead” (Yunus, vii). Yunus nurtured the dream of eradicating poverty from the world. He has taken a bold initiative to help the poor people in Bangladesh. At first he physically stepped onto the fields to show the farmers how to cultivate rice to optimize yields. Although his hands-on approach received skepticism, his next step was the launching of Chittagong University Rural Development Project which provided the poor people academic credit.

In order to do more for the poor, he next focused on providing small loans to the very poor to buy raw materials. Initially he became personal guarantor to Janata Bank which is one of the largest government banks in Bangladesh. From this concept, Grameen Bank evolved that provides un-collateral loans to the poor. He encourages repayment of the loans on weekly and even daily basis to prevent accumulation of large debts. Yunus’s efforts have proved to be fruitful and he dreams of a poverty free world by 2050, “poverty does not belong in a civilized human society.

Its proper place is in a museum” (Yunus, 248).Reply There are ways in which people can move towards fulfilling the mission of making this world free of poverty, and the process lies in desire among all people to do something for the poor. Rich countries often provide financial resources to the poor countries, but this is not the solution since it cannot eradicate poverty in large scale. The growing disparity between different sections of the society is another reflection of poverty as curse to one section of the society.

While rich people indulge in luxury, there are other people starving and dying for lack of food. Often rich people spend money on buying unnecessary luxuries instead of donating the same to the people who need it. Yunus’s Grameen Bank project has helped the poor Bangladeshis, especially the women to become self-confident and self-reliant. With their income they improve the lives of men and children. To fight poverty, more people need to come forward in order to make a difference in the global scale.

ReferenceYunus, Mohammad. Banker to the Poor, PublicAffairs, 2007