Microcredit pioneers win Nobel Peace Prize.

[buttmunch]

OSLO (AP) — Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pioneering the use of microcredit, the extension of small loans to benefit poor entrepreneurs.
The Nobel Committee said Yunus and the bank he founded had used the innovative program to "create economic and social development from below."

"Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the committee said in its citation.

Grameen Bank provides credit to "the poorest of the poor" in rural Bangladesh, without any collateral, according to its website. Its model of micro financing has inspired similar efforts around the world.

Yunus said he was "absolutedly delighted."

"I cannot believe that it has really happened," he said when he received the phone call from the Nobel Foundation. "Everyone was telling me that I would get the prize but it came as a surprise. It is fantastic news for the people that have supported us."

Women have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of microcredit, which provides small loans to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.

"Economic growth and political democracy can not achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male," the committee said.

Grameen Bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh.

"At GB, credit is a cost effective weapon to fight poverty and it serves as a catalyst in the overall development of socio-economic conditions of the poor who have been kept outside the banking orbit on the ground that they are poor and hence not bankable," the committee said.

Yunus and the bank will share in the $1.4 million prize as well as a gold medal and diploma.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...ay-nobel_x.htm

Excellent choice in my opinion. I like to see this prize go to people who are doing something to make a difference in peoples lives in a more local way. It has more impact in the long run.