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Grameen Bank AI simulator
(@Grameen Bank_simulator)
Hub AI
Grameen Bank AI simulator
(@Grameen Bank_simulator)
Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank (Bengali: গ্রামীণ ব্যাংক) is a microfinance, specialized community development bank founded in Bangladesh. It provides small loans (known as microcredit or "grameencredit") to the impoverished without requiring collateral.
Grameen Bank is a statutory public authority. It is originated in 1976, in the work of Muhammad Yunus, a professor at the University of Chittagong, who launched a research project to study how to design a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. In October 1983, the Grameen Bank was authorized by national legislation to operate as an independent bank.
In 1998, the Bank's "Low-cost Housing Program" won a World Habitat Award. In 2006, the bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The bank's success has inspired similar projects in more than 64 countries around the world, including a World Bank initiative to finance Grameen-type lending systems.
Muhammad Yunus was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974, to make a small personal loan of US$27 to a group of 42 families, as start-up money so that they could make items for sale, without the burdens of high interest under predatory lending. Yunus believed that making such loans available to a larger population could stimulate businesses and reduce the widespread rural poverty in Bangladesh.
Yunus developed the principles of the Grameen Bank from his research and experience. Grameen Bank is Bengali for "Rural" or "Village" Bank. He began a research project, together with a national commercial bank and the University of Chittagong, extending microcredit to test his method for providing credit and banking services to the rural poor. In 1976, the village of Jobra became the first to be served by the project. Over the next two years, the project expanded to other villages in the area. The project, with support from the Bangladesh Bank, was extended in 1979 to the Tangail District (to the north of the capital, Dhaka). The project's services expanded to other districts of Bangladesh over the next few years.
Through an ordinance of the Bangladesh government dated 2 October 1983, the project was converted into the Grameen Bank. Bankers Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton, of ShoreBank, a community development bank in Chicago, helped Yunus incorporate the bank under a grant from the Ford Foundation. The bank's repayment rate suffered from economic disruption following the 1998 flood in Bangladesh, but it recovered in subsequent years. By the beginning of 2005, the bank had loaned over US$4.7 billion and by the end of 2008, $7.6 billion to the poor.
In 2011, the Bangladesh government forced Yunus to resign from Grameen Bank, saying that at age 72, he was years beyond the legal limit for the position.
Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank (Bengali: গ্রামীণ ব্যাংক) is a microfinance, specialized community development bank founded in Bangladesh. It provides small loans (known as microcredit or "grameencredit") to the impoverished without requiring collateral.
Grameen Bank is a statutory public authority. It is originated in 1976, in the work of Muhammad Yunus, a professor at the University of Chittagong, who launched a research project to study how to design a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. In October 1983, the Grameen Bank was authorized by national legislation to operate as an independent bank.
In 1998, the Bank's "Low-cost Housing Program" won a World Habitat Award. In 2006, the bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The bank's success has inspired similar projects in more than 64 countries around the world, including a World Bank initiative to finance Grameen-type lending systems.
Muhammad Yunus was inspired during the Bangladesh famine of 1974, to make a small personal loan of US$27 to a group of 42 families, as start-up money so that they could make items for sale, without the burdens of high interest under predatory lending. Yunus believed that making such loans available to a larger population could stimulate businesses and reduce the widespread rural poverty in Bangladesh.
Yunus developed the principles of the Grameen Bank from his research and experience. Grameen Bank is Bengali for "Rural" or "Village" Bank. He began a research project, together with a national commercial bank and the University of Chittagong, extending microcredit to test his method for providing credit and banking services to the rural poor. In 1976, the village of Jobra became the first to be served by the project. Over the next two years, the project expanded to other villages in the area. The project, with support from the Bangladesh Bank, was extended in 1979 to the Tangail District (to the north of the capital, Dhaka). The project's services expanded to other districts of Bangladesh over the next few years.
Through an ordinance of the Bangladesh government dated 2 October 1983, the project was converted into the Grameen Bank. Bankers Ron Grzywinski and Mary Houghton, of ShoreBank, a community development bank in Chicago, helped Yunus incorporate the bank under a grant from the Ford Foundation. The bank's repayment rate suffered from economic disruption following the 1998 flood in Bangladesh, but it recovered in subsequent years. By the beginning of 2005, the bank had loaned over US$4.7 billion and by the end of 2008, $7.6 billion to the poor.
In 2011, the Bangladesh government forced Yunus to resign from Grameen Bank, saying that at age 72, he was years beyond the legal limit for the position.