Microfinance Focus, January 27, 2012: At the ongoing World Economic Forum, Noble Laureate, Prof. Muhammad Yunus said, “We need to expand the idea of business. Rather than just making money, business can be for solving problems. We have enough technology and innovative capacity to make that happen”.

Highlighting the failures of the current capitalist system, Prof. Yunus said, “Over the years, it is brewing problems like poverty, unemployment and food crisis. We have to abandon the present structure and build a new one which is not about money obsession but about human beings”.

Prof. Yunus believes that human creativity is enormous but has never been used to solve problems. “We used that capacity to make money. Once we open that up, these problems can disappear. You have the power, use it and make it happen. You can create your own world. You don’t have to take the world and live in there. Go ahead and do it”, he said.

Close to 3000 world leaders are convening in Davos at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting. 30 of them are social entrepreneurs from around the world. The theme of the meeting is “The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models”.

Source: http://www.microfinancefocus.com/mffnews/yunus-discuss-social-entrepreneurship-world-economic-forum

Updated: 2012-01-27

Cloud of gloom descends on Swiss resort town hosting key economic forum

DAVOS, Switzerland - The European debt crisis and global challenges have cast a pall over the Swiss Alpine resort town of Davos unlike anything experienced before at the World Economic Forum, leading economists said.

"The mood here is one of depression and gloom and no one is sure if the future will be any better," Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel-winning Bangladeshi economist and founder of Grameen Bank, told China Daily at the forum.

BY ALEX FERRERAS ON JANUARY 26, 2012 IN BUSINESS LOANS

(Source Larry Rulison Times Union, Albany, N.Y.) – A new small business lending program at the University at Albany has created a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Capital Region who have $35,000 for their dreams and a great deal of confidence.

On Wednesday, UAlbany introduced the first class — 11 people — to complete its new Small Enterprise Economic Development, or SEED, program. Participants such as Patricia Greenwood, who runs a vintage shop in Schenectady called Patricia’s Room, said the program, anchored by a $2.5 million revolvingloan fund established by SEFCU, has made led to vast improvements.

Speakers at a dialogue in London said social business can help cut youth unemployment and work as catalyst for climate change, reports UNB.

Youth Initiative UK (YIU), a charity organisation of youths operating in London in association with Rotary Club of Tower Hamlets (RCTH), recently arranged the dialogue to promote social business within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

YIU chairperson Mohammad Abu Haseed presented the keynote paper on ‘Social Business’ while project officer Syed Rabius Shams, monitoring officer Esrat Jahan Mita and admin officer Abdul Hadi Faisal also took part in the discussion.

Posted: 01/26/2012

Twenty-five hundred citizens from around the world have descended on the snowy ski resort of Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. This year's theme is The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models. I like that it is about 'shaping' new models and not necessarily 'creating' them.

The diversity of people and confluence of ideologies is prevalent and core to the lively and smart discussions. Nowhere is the diversity more evident than in the outlook of the world's future. From my conversations thus far I have been struck by the conflict between those who are incredibly optimistic and carry a high level of confidence that new and better solutions are being developed through impactful innovators vs. those who are much more pessimistic about the future and the increasing number and power of the prolonged world crises we are experiencing.

Those bordering on pessimism believe that the new reality is here to stay. I am much more aligned to the optimists. And frankly, I have been struck by the optimism that is a common outlook of most of the social entrepreneurs. It seems rationale that a social entrepreneur exists because he/she is focused on creating solutions to our world's problems. We believe that our society's biggest challenges are solvable, and that, as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus said, "the distance between the impossible and possible is shrinking."

Date: 25 Jan, 2012

Forum with Professor Muhammad Yunus - Understanding Social Business

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012

Nika Salvetti
January 24, 2012

UPeace Professor Nika Salvetti draws attention to new approaches in business that strive to diversify the profit-seeking priorities of the business world toward more sustainable and socially responsible practices. She highlights the contribution of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus, whose prescriptions for social business include sustainability, improved working standards, reinvestment of profits within the business itself, and poverty reduction as a business objective.

Today’s financial crisis is challenging conventional economic and business paradigms by questioning their ethical and socially responsible behaviours.

The reliability of such paradigms is questioned, demanding more transparency, business ethics and social responsiveness from all sectors of society, government institutions included.

Before falling into the mistake of going back to ‘business as usual’ while adopting ad-hoc and superficial solutions, researchers and analysts urge practitioners to search for a new modus operandi in the ways in which governments deal with their public finances, how the private sector implements its business practices, and how society responds to its production and consumption habits in respect to a more balanced equation between scarce natural resources and human needs/wants.

By GHAZANFAR ALI KHAN I ARAB NEWS

Published: Jan 13, 2012

RIYADH: A Nobel laureate has supported Prince Talal’s idea to create a special bank for poor Saudi citizens at a symposium in Riyadh on Wednesday.

Muhammad Yunus said there was a need to create a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity with a mission to help the poor.

Prince Talal, chief of the Arab Gulf Program for Development (AGFUND), told the symposium that there was a possibility of designing a credit delivery system to provide banking services “targeted at the poor segment of Saudi society” with a mission to uplift them.

There is still room in microfinance course

Jan 11, 2012, by Hwa Lee

Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 by helping millions of poor people become financially self-reliant. His idea is often called microfinance, and it is available at BYU this semester.

Microfinance (Business Management 490R), which is open to all majors, is a great opportunity for students to learn the best practices of social business from the bottom up, according to Warner Woodworth, a professor at BYU Marriott School and also a social entrepreneur. Although the class was not listed online until this week because of an unexpected procedural error, Woodworth hopes many students will take advantage of the class, which is taught once a year.