Professor Muhammad Yunus is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work founding the Grameen Movement, an innovative program known as microcredit that provides small loans to the poorest rural areas of Bangladesh without requiring collateral. Grameen means "village" or "rural" in the Bangla language. As of this year, the bank has 6.67 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are woman. There are 2,247 branches of the bank, which together provide services in 72,096 villages or more than 86 percent of the total villages in Bangladesh. Microcredit recognizes that the poor have skills that are often under-utlitized and that they can be responsible for lifting themselves out of poverty.
Professor Yunus started providing microcredit in the mid 1970s. His first project provided 42 villagers with small loans. The entire cost of the loans was $27. The loans were all repaid and this started an entirely new movement that has helped millions of of individuals break out of the vicious cycle of poverty
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