From the Reporters

Microlender Wins Nobel Prize

 

Economist Muhammed Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, shared the Nobel Prize for Peace, it was announced Thursday.

The New York Times reported that, "Through Yunus's efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cell phone they desperately needed to get ahead."

Microcredit, which is also known as microfinance, first became well known in the second half of the 1990s when it was championed by, among others, then First Lady Hillary Clinton. But in fact, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank two decades earlier, in 1976. The newly-minted laureate has said he will use a portion of the prize money to start a company that will develop low-cost, nutritious food for the poor in the developing world.