The year was 1976 and the place was the village of Jopa in Bangladesh.  Yunus was teaching economics in a country where people were dying in the streets. He would pass many of these starving people on the daily walk from his beautiful hillside bungalow to the university where he taught.  Yunus began to feel that he had to do something to help his fellow countrymen, often described as the "poorest of the poor."  With a loan of only a few dollars he enabled Sufiya to establish her own business, increase her income seven-fold, and repay the loan within a few months.  

Yunus went to conventional banks in an attempt to convince them that the poor could be a good credit risk but this defied all the established rules of banking.  These people had no collateral, no credit history, nothing to secure the bank's interests.  Yunus was forced to start his own lending program which began with 42 people like Sufiya who required the equivalent of $27 US to get their enterprises off the ground.  But he didn't just hand them the money.  The recipients had to commit to a program designed by Yunus.  Based on openness and trust and providing the elements of incentive and support the program has helped millions to lift themselves and their families out of abject poverty. 

 In 1983 Grameen, which means "rural." became a formal bank Since then it has made 16 million micro-loans in 70,000 villages of Bangladesh.  The great majority of the participants have been women, some of whom were so poor that they could not leave their houses on the day when they washed their only sari.  Grameen Bank has an unprecedented repayment rate of 98%, with actual defaults being less than 1/2 of 1%, and the program has been adopted by numerous organizations all over the world.  

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