Muhammad Yunus is a member of Ashoka's Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship.
Fundamentalism wanes as women gets stronger, said an important Bangladeshi architect of antipoverty measures yesterday.
Visiting Turkey as a guest of Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc, Professor Muhammad Yunus, designer of the microcredit policy aiming to abolish worldwide poverty, held a press conference yesterday after a seminar entitled "The role of microcredit in reducing poverty and necessary legal regulations."
At a ceremony held to honor of the professor, Arinc awarded Yunus, the founder and CEO of the Grameen Bank (Grameen means "the poor"), a parliamentary medal and certificate.
Asked whether there's a parallel between fundamentalism and falling poverty, Yunus responded affirmatively, saying that rates of fundamentalism will fall as women begin to become empowered.
In order to boost the participation of women in society, Yunus said that his bank advises all women who receive microcredit to use their right to vote in elections.
Saying that the Bangladeshi fundamentalist party had 17 deputies in 1996, Yunus explained that the number fell to three after the women receiving microcredits began to use their votes.
The professor asserted that he initially had some doubt as to whether the microcredit program would be successful or not. However, he was convinced that the program would indeed be a success when he saw the results of the first launch of the pilot program in Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey.
Yunus was hesitant not because of the Turkish public but rather individual factors since he emphasized that success is merely dependent on those who are qualified to take responsibility.
Yunus, who also visited Turkey in 2003 as the guest of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party Diyarbakir Deputy Aziz Akgul assumed responsibility for the credit program. "It's not about that Akgul has a special talents, but about his attitude of being a responsible person," he said.
Also chairman of the Turkish Foundation for Prevention of Waste (TISVA), Akgul launched the microcredit project in Turkey. Akgul said that the project had provided 3,200 entrepreneurs a credit of $2.7 million. "All of these credits were paid back," said Akgul and added that the micro finance trend which was first set up in Diyarbakir will be spread to Van, Sanliurfa and Batman.
Akgul, who said that this isn't done for the sake of his party, added that the project welcomes everyone who wants to be a part of the project.
According to Yunus, institutionalization is needed for running the project. The professor said that Pakistan provided institutionalization and thus he established their own micro finance banks.
He said that also Vietnam, Uganda, Venezuela and Bangladesh are all countries which have institutionalized their microcredit projects.
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