Muhammad Yunus

i spent much of 7 years helping to develop a journal around the wishes of muhammad yunus with friends such as adam smith scholars at glasgow university- that doesnt mean i am correct in all of the following but its based on a lot of survey work of people who gave a lot to connect round yunus dreams like put poverty in a museum and and since 2006 put youth unemployment in a museum-

when i qualified as an MA in statistics from Cambridge university in 1973, i progressively studied leadership communications- since 1989 my main survey questions has been : what would the world uniquely miss if this leader (person, brand, idea, partnership network or data platform) hadn't existed.
This methodology chartering may sound too simple but the question rills down systemically into valuing dynamics of trust and heroic purpose - it seems to map subnetwork segments of people demanding value multipliers( customers, employees, societies, owners, students ...) and people wanting to co-produce or knowledgeenetwork around the leaders purpose and related goals for improving the human lot

i believe the following different stages in the exponential rise and decline of networking round yunus purpose are worth examining - while i regard yunus as a hero if not a family friend, i have found that western aid has become an extremely inefficient market which may end up causing extinction of our species!- with many people playing politics with fund raising (and being driven by non-transparent singular vested interests) not openly networking solutions (nor truly action learning round youth) with the people who most needed help in sustaining their communities- see for example june 2018's admission at the UN that while 17 wonderful sustainability goals have now been declared, banking is currently funding any of them

5 the decline of yunus banking since winning the nobel prize in 2006; in 2011 yunus licence to operate a bank was repealed; a depressing political fight resulted in all the bank's resources and many million members networks across rural bangladesh being taken from him; while he continues to fundraise for the yunus centre those who want to sustain humanity by applying lessons from yunus life probably need to focus on earlier times while grameen service franchise built round village branches - each 60 circles of 60 village mothers grew and grew  more ...- in 2009 the "three" founders who had teamed since 1974 started to split up -  yunus now focuses on 50 yunus center partnerships at colleges and hubs and this major connection with paris olympics 2024

(the social business model is an organisation designed round positive cash flow but all surplus is reinvested in its social goal not dividends - its partnership branding and ownership of its equity are variables that can take on specific contexts though the intention is that the purpose can never be sold out) the social business catalogue at danone communities is one of the benchmark collections we advise people to look at

4 exponential growth of the "three" person founders team from founding of the bank in 1983 including pre-tech to 1996, and post leapfroging tech (mobile and solar) from 1996- usually a great organisation has a founding trad - the overall leaders ; two others who can mediate the leader (if he pushes too fast or conversely needs moral support) in a way that one person cannot; in grameens case there were four founders but the dynamic was three in one with yunus loking up to one elder professor latifee and inspiring two students (mrs begum and mr barua); as the only woman mrs begum had been at the forefront of the values and in field reality (village mothers in the 1970s were banned from speaking to strange men); it was 1983 that a national ordinance was passed creating grameen as a bank for the poor with a majority shareholding by the poor village members and a minority holding by the government; over the next 13 years everything in the villages (without electricity) was personally networked- sustainable charity models were developed around microfinance and loans to build one room homes which were cyclone and monsoon ;proof and came with a pit latrine attached. More on the branch model and young banking teams who operate 60 centres per branch.

4.2 More on the emerging post-digital years 1996-2006 -this also started a decade of the lobbying for yunus to get a nobel prize- this became the annual purpose of microcreditsummit originally launched out of washington dc by hilary clinton and queen sofia of spain - -more on crises of misunderstanding caused by this advocacy network

3 exponential concept experimentation of the leadership three 1974-1983- yunus had come back from usa as a professor of economics teaching at chittagong university=- when a million person famine occurred he decided that the economics models he was teaching had no urgent relevance in bangladesh and took the class to a poor village where they started experimenting on solutions to end poverty. Begum and Barua were the studnts who transfered to working full time with yunus; in  particular begums research with village women identified the 16 decisions - goals that village mothers defined as what ending poverty meant to their family and community; these goals became a chant at every weekly circle meeting where microfinance was conducted round 60 village mothers at a time - more

2 yunus 7 years in the states in his late twenties- yunus won a scholarship to van der bilt the year that racial segragation ended; he gained his doctorate and became an associate professor at e. tenessee; he married and as the war of independence spiralled in 1971 increasingly spent time lobbying congress for recognition of the mew nation; he returned to bangladesh circa 1973 where his russian american wife found it impossible to live with their new baby daughter monica- she returned to her family in new jesrsey with yunus separated from monica for the next 25 years or so- his family life, the afmine, the irrelevance of his university classes to the futures young people wanted to see - all shaped yunus as arguably the most driven networker and storyteller of his generation -more

1 yunus first imaginative leap age 15ish- yunus grew up in a jewelry store in Chittagong - his father was a practical small business man; his mother lovingly grew quite a sizable family; until falling ill when yunus was aged about 10; for five years as an elder son he had to keep an eye on hos younger siblings; then he decided to join the world boy scout summit being hosted that year in caada ; on the way back to Bangladesh he joined a group of about 10 teenagers who on reaching continental europe drove back the rest of the way home; in the late 1950s this was still possible with continental Eurasia south of russia relatively peaceful and visa-free; the cultural fusion and imaginative openings of this trip contributed to a boyish belief that nothing is impossible which became the life force of everything MY linkedin

We are here to learn - if you have a twitter length link - i will happily include it if i understand its context chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

at peak grameen bank led by yunus nearly 8 million grameen women members (representing about 35 million family members) were participating in savings and loansthere were about 2000 branches - typically teamed 5 young staff who each week visited 60 centre circles of 60 village mothers

loans in 1983 were originally for small agriculture
a bigger loan was for building one hut homes
for about 8 years from 1996 the most profitable loan was to be the teelphone lady - one per circle of 60- she hired her phone out and often became a local yellow pages of listing of who to call for what or how to check whether market prices were better in diferent places

both grameen solar and telephone produced a double leapfrog model - ie vlilages leapt over a technolpgy they had never had acecss to (solar leaping over electricuiy grids, mobile leaping over fixed line phones)

however yunus never succeeded in developing digital finance - the deeper network brac did with bkash; and from 2011 yunus lost control of grameen bank and so his own access to most of the membership networks and village hosting of global social business experiments; the bank continues microloans ... whether the memners get the full ownership rights they did under yunus is unclear; update sought on  grameen shakti once the most exciting microsolar business