Millionaire banker Muhammad Yunus will never forget the famine1 that struck Bangladesh in 1974. He was teaching economics at a university near the nation's capital. “Hungry people were every where. Often they sat to still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead. They all looked alike: men, women, children. Old people looked like children, and children looked like old people,” he wrote in Banker to the Poor, a book he coauthored.
As the famine got worse, Yunus remembered, he had a hard time teaching abstract economic theories.“Nothing... I taught reflected the life around me.”
While visiting the village of Jobra, he met a 21-year-old mother of three named Sufia Begum, who was selling bamboo stool she'd woven by hand. She told Yunus she had borrowed the equivalent2 of 9 cents from a village moneylender3 to buy the materials for each stool. But the moneylender charged such a high interest rate, she made only 2 cents per stool after she paid back the loan. (Interest is a charge for a loan, usually a percentage of the amount borrowed.)
Yunus learned that many of the women in the village owed the same moneylender a total of $27. Yunus gave them the money out of his own pocket. By eliminating4 the moneylender and high interest fees, the women made more money and repaid their loan to Yunus in full.
Yunus then realized that poor people can be as creditworthy5 as the rich. And he wanted to do more. In 1983, he founded Grameen Bank to make small loans to poor villagers. Since his loan to the women of Jobra, Yunus and Grameen have made $5.72 billion in small loans to more than 6.6 million Bangladeshis, most of them women.
For their work, Yunus and Grameen Bank recently won the prestigious6 Nobel Peace Prize. Half of the $1.4 million prize will go to Yunus; the other half will go to Grameen Bank.
The Nobel Prize committee says it honored Yunus because “lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty.”
Breaking the Cycle
Poverty is rampant7 in Bangladesh. Half of the country's approximately 150 million people earn less than $1 a day. Most of the Grameen loans are tiny—some as little as $12. Though the loans are small, they aren't easy to get. Because borrowers have no collateral8 to borrow against, they must pledge9 to follow a strict set of rules, including a vow10 never to be late with a payment. Loans are made only to groups of five or more people. If one person doesn't make a payment, the entire group loses its credit rating—and cannot get another loan. Payments are small but frequent.
Ahmena Khatoon used her loan to buy two rickshaws11(transportation vehicles). She rents them to villagers who pay a small fee. “I had a baby to feed, no job, no income. So I joined a unit of 41 other women who took out loans from Grameen,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “We all have our own businesses. One bought chickens, another a cow, and someone else breeds fish.”
Though the terms of the loans are strict, Khatoon thinks they help the Grameen system work. “If the bank was not so tough, all of us would have defaulted12 a long time ago. Then we would all be poor again,” she says.
Khatoon says having her own business gives her a sense of pride and confidence. The majority of Grameen loans go to women because Yunus set out to help women thrive in the extremely male-dominated society. He has found that women in Bangladesh are more likely than men to use their earnings to help their families and pay back their loans.
A Poverty-Free World
Since its founding, Grameen Bank has inspired similar loan programs in 100 countries and has been copied by thousands of institutions.
Yunus hopes that his winning the Nobel Peace Prize will call attention to the problem of poverty. He says he wants people to “start believing we can create a poverty-free world.”
Yunus told London's Independent that one day“our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.”
The Nobel Prizes
The Nobel Prizes were the brainchild13 of Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896) of Sweden, an accomplished scientist, businessman, and engineer. Nobel had more than 350 patented inventions. Nobel's greatest scientific achievement was the invention of dynamite in 1867. Named after dynamis, the Greek word for“power,” dynamite made it easier, safer, and cheaper to blast through rock. The experiments leading up to dynamite's invention were anything but safe, however. Nobel's younger brother was killed in an accidental explosion and several of the inventor's factories combusted14 during his career.
At the time of his death, Nobel was a millionaire. He owned 93 factories around the world, which produced 66,500 tons of explosives yearly.
Despite his“explosive” career, Nobel was a pacifist and opposed the military use of his inventions. Perhaps to compensate for his destructive work, Nobel—who had no wife or children—left a will bequeathing $9 million to fund the prizes that bear his name. In addition to the peace prize, awards are given for advances in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature. The Nobel Prizes are announced in October, but they are always presented on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The first prizes were awarded in 1901.
银行家穆罕默德·尤努斯是一位百万富翁。他永远不会忘记1974年孟加拉国所遭遇的那场大饥荒。当时，他在首都附近的一所大学里教授经济学。他在与人合著的《穷人的银行家》一书中这样写道：“到处是饥民。他们经常静静地坐在那里，让人弄不清他们到底是活着还是死了。他们看上去都一样：男人、女人，还有儿童。老人看上去像儿童，儿童看上去却像老人。”
尤努斯记得，随着饥荒形势的日益恶化，他很难再教那些抽象的经济理论。“我所讲授的，根本不能反映周围的现实生活。”
一次，尤努斯来到乔布拉村，走访了一位生有3个孩子的21岁年轻母亲苏菲亚·贝格姆。当时，她正在卖自己编织的竹凳子。她告诉尤努斯，她编织一条竹凳，要从村里放贷人那里借相当于9美分的贷款来买竹子材料。但是，放贷人却要很高的利息，以至于她每卖出一条竹凳，还贷之后仅得2美分的收益。（利息是指借贷的费用，通常是借贷总数的百分之几。）
尤努斯了解到，村中许多妇女欠同一个放贷人的钱总计27美元。尤努斯从自己的口袋里掏出钱来帮他们还了贷。没有了放贷人和高额利息，那些妇女就可以赚更多的钱，并全数还给了尤努斯。
于是，尤努斯意识到穷人可以像富人一样有信誉。他要继续做下去。1983年，他创办了格莱珉银行，向贫穷的村民提供小额贷款。从向乔布拉村的妇女发放贷款开始，尤努斯和格莱珉银行累计向660多万孟加拉人，其中大多是妇女，发放了57亿2千万美元的小额贷款。
由于他们的杰出贡献，尤努斯和格莱珉银行荣获了著名的诺贝尔和平奖。140万美元奖金的一半归尤努斯，另一半归格莱珉银行。
诺贝尔和平奖委员会表彰尤努斯是因为“只有当大批人口找到消除贫困的途径，才能取得永久的和平。”
打破周期
在孟加拉国，贫困肆虐，无法控制。在一亿五千万人口中，大约有一半人一天赚不到1美元。格莱珉银行的大多数贷款是小额的，有的仅12美元。尽管贷款额度小，但也不是容易得到的。因为借贷人是无抵押贷款，她们必须保证遵守严格的规定，其中包括承诺决不延迟还贷。贷款往往只发放给5人以及5人以上的小组。如果一人没有还贷，全组就会失去信誉评级，也就不能再获贷款。返还的贷款虽然数额很小，但始终在进行。
阿赫米娜·卡图恩用贷款买了两辆人力车（运输工具），然后租给村里人，收取小额租金。“我要喂养一个小孩，没有工作，没有收入。于是，我加入了一个由41名妇女组成的小组，从格莱珉获得贷款，”她对《芝加哥论坛报》说，“我们所有人都有了自己的生意。有人买了鸡，有人买了母牛，还有人开始养鱼。”
虽然贷款的条件是苛刻的，卡图恩觉得有了这些条件，格莱珉系统才能正常运转。“如果银行不那么严苛，我们所有人早就疏怠了。那么，我们将再次陷入贫困。”她说。
卡图恩说，有自己的生意使她有了自豪感和自信心。格莱珉的大部分贷款发放给了妇女，是因为尤努斯开始就想帮助妇女在一个极端男权社会取得生存地位。他发现孟加拉国的妇女要比男人更能精打细算、操持家庭和及时还贷。
一个没有贫困的世界
自从创建以来，格莱珉银行已经在100个国家建立相似的小额贷款项目，成千上万的机构开始仿效格莱珉模式。
尤努斯希望他荣获诺贝尔和平奖可以唤起人们关注贫困问题。他说他要让人们“开始相信我们可以创建一个没有贫困的世界。”
尤努斯对伦敦《独立报》说，总有一天，“我们的后人要到博物馆去才能看到贫困是啥样的。”
诺贝尔奖
诺贝尔奖是由瑞典著名科学家、商人和工程师阿尔弗雷德·伯纳德·诺贝尔(1833-1896)创立的。诺贝尔一生拥有350多项发明专利，其中最伟大的科学成就是在1867年发明了炸药。炸药（Dynamite）一词取自希腊语“Dynamis”，也就是“力量”的意思。炸药使得岩石爆破更容易、更安全，也更便宜。然而，发明炸药的实验远不安全。诺贝尔的弟弟就在一次意外爆炸中丧生，而且在诺贝尔生涯中，他的几间工厂也是毁于由炸药引发的大火。
去世时，诺贝尔已经是百万富翁。他在世界各地拥有93家工厂，每年生产66,500吨炸药。
虽然一生事业极具“爆炸性”，诺贝尔本人却是一位和平主义者，反对把他的发明用于军事目的。诺贝尔一辈子没有妻儿。可能是为了对自己的毁灭性工作进行补偿，他留下遗嘱，用900万美元设立以他的名字命名的奖项。除了和平奖以外，还奖励在物理学、化学、生理学或医学，以及文学领域取得的突出成绩。诺贝尔奖每年10月公布，但是总是在12月10日——诺贝尔逝世纪念日颁奖。1901年举办了第一届诺贝尔奖颁奖仪式。
1. famine n. 饥荒
2. equivalent n. 相等物，对等物，对应物
3. moneylender n. 放债的人
4. eliminate v. 排除，消除
5. creditworthy adj. 有信誉的，值得信赖的
6. prestigious adj. 有声望的，有威信
7. rampant adj. 猖獗的，猛烈的
8. collateral n. 抵押物
9. pledge v. 保证
10. vow n. 誓言，誓约
11. rickshaw n. 人力车，黄包车
12. default v. 不履行职责，拖欠
13. brainchild n. 想法，计划，（口）脑力劳动的产物
14. combust v. 燃烧