Professor Muhammad Yunus is a renowned Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, economist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Born on June 28, 1940, in Chittagong.
Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, is a global visionary from Bangladesh pioneering the concepts of microcredit and social business. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded Nobel Peace Prize. He has founded more than 50 social business companies. For his constant innovation and enterprise, the Fortune Magazine named Professor Yunus in March 2012 as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.”
He is the first Muslim to receive the Congressional Gold Medal distributed by the United States Congress in 2013. He received the US Presidential Medal in 2009. At the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Professor Yunus was conferred with the Olympic Laurel award for his extensive work in sports for development, bringing the concept of social business to the sports world. In 2019 the Vatican awarded him with the Lamp of Peace of St. Francis for promoting peace and harmony world wide.
Professor Muhammad Yunus is the recipient of 66 honorary degrees from universities across 26 countries. He has received 145 awards from 33 countries including state honours from 10 countries. He is one of only seven individuals to have received the Nobel Peace Prize, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom and the United States Congressional Gold Medal and has appeared on the cover of Time, Newsweek and Forbes Magazines.
Yunus signed up for the Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty along with his Holiness the Dalai Lama and 100 other noble Laureates. He has been stressing on the urgency of coming out of the old ways of thinking and doing. This was the basis of his theme of 'No Going Back' during the pandemic. He relentlessly devotes his time and energy to inspire people into creating a world of 3 Zeros - zero net carbon emission, zero wealth concentration for ending poverty once for all and zero unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in everyone.
Recent focuses:
Yunus Social Business Centre (YSBC) is an initiative inspired by Professor Yunus's principles. These centers are typically established within universities or other institutions to promote and research social business — businesses that aim to solve social problems while being financially self-sustainable. There are 108 universities from 39 countries around the world affiliated with the program.
Professor Yunus launched a programme of creating a network of 3ZERO Clubs, each club to be formed by five young people to come up with ways to tackle problems through a creative solution. At the moment there are over 530 3Zero Clubs in 46 countries across 6 continents.
He is recently campaigning to build a network of support groups in the Amazonian region and has several youth-based capacity building projects in East Africa, South America and other regions.
Professor Yunus has been campaigning for making the Covid 19 Vaccine as a Global Common Good since June, 2020, urging the World Trade Organization to place a temporary waiver on Intellectual Property rights on vaccines to free up the global capacity to produce vaccines at all locations around the world. More than 25 Nobel Laureates, 42 Former Heads of State and Government, 89 global celebrities and over 2.7 million people signed up for the pledge.