PibE attends Dr. Muhammad Yunus' lecture at the Chan

PibE was fortunate to sit two rows in front of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize (along with his Grameen Bank), as he gave a talk at UBC last Friday.

Dr. Yunus, world renown for establishing a bank that lends to the poor, first came up with the idea to lend small amounts from his pocket to poor people in his village in Bangladesh.

"I couldn't believe that people have to suffer so much for so little" he said, of the moment he discovered that the collective debt of 40 of the poorest in his village amounted to just $27 US.

The Grameen Bank now has 7.34 million borrowers, 97% of them impoverished women, and all of them own 94% of the bank's equity. No collateral is required of borrowers, and there is a 98% recovery rate on loans. "We just looked at how other banks do things, and whatever they did, we would do the opposite," said Dr. Yunus, triggering appreciative laughter from the audience.

Dr. Yunus emphasized that poverty "is not the fault of the person," but rather, "the failure of society". He uses the analogy of the Bonsai tree, whose seed is taken from a large tree. Given enough resources and room to grow, it can grow into a similarly large tree. However, because it is placed in a confined container with limited resources to draw upon, it only grows into a miniature tree. Like the seed, "all human beings are packed with unlimited potentials, unlimited opportunity," he said, and society should further their realization, not restrict it.

After descriptions of the experiences that led him to become the world's most famous micro-creditor, Dr. Yunus shared his two-business model of the economy, an idea hailed by the dismal-scientist half of PibE as "feasible, subject to homothetic preferences."

In the two-business model, every producer would have two businesses: one profit maximizing business from which to obtain monetary profits (the means), and the other, a social business, in which to invest the profits, to the ends of furthering human development and alleviating suffering. Having found her calling in the business of suffering-alleviation herself, the nursing-scientist half of PibE approved of the model, acknowledging that "all good things come in two's."

Upon hearing his idea, said Dr. Yunus, many would tell him that people will never be crazy enough to invest in a social business. "People are crazier than that!" said Dr. Yunus. If people are crazy enough to just give money away to charities, he reasoned, then they are more than crazy enough to invest in a social project from which they can expect all investments to be returned.

Grameen Danone is Dr. Yunus' current social business project, a joint venture between the bank and the French yogurt company to produce, and sell cheaply, nutrient-infused yogurt for malnourished children.

Dr. Yunus closed his lecture by expressing his optimism that, by 2030, the poverty rate in Bangladesh will be cut down to zero, forcing subsequent generations of Bangladeshi to visit "poverty museums" for a glimpse of impoverishment. Though highly improbable, it is difficult to deny that high improbabilities have served Dr. Yunus well thus far.

Bangladesh is currently on track for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living under $1/day by 2015.

After the lecture, a member of PibE was seen accepting a small investment from a co-attendee in the form of VanCity's "microcredit toolkit" info-package, which contains a user guide, information on peer lending, and a program workbook. However, the representative for PibE declined to comment on speculations that the musical duo is engaging in talks to replace the hitherto label of "non-profit" with "social business."