Most of his life, Yunus spent in fight with poverty helping people in villages, he once lived in. He graduated from Dhaka University and received his BA in 1960 and MA in 1961. Later he obtained his PhD. Degree from Vanderbuilt University. Through his career, Yunus lectured at Middle Tennessee State University and then at Chittagong University in Bangladesh. Lecturing economics, Yunus was always interested in applying business concepts to help local communities. In 1976 Yunus was able to secure a loan from the government Jonata Bank. The money would be redistributed and landed to the poor in Jabra. By 1982 the bank expanded offering services to around 30,000 members, and the project that was started from a personal investment of $27 began operating as a full-fledged bank under the new name – Grameen Bank, which means Village Bank. Read more about Yunus.

Nola.com recently released an article about Tulane University Business Plan Competition, and some of the concepts that the finalists are proposing. One of the finalists is Banque Pour Tous, a company founded by William Harper and couple of his classmates. Harper is proposing to help situation in West Africa via the use of cell phones. People who live in that region are not able to pursue many initiatives because they are limited financially and do not have any access to banks in order to borrow money. Harper proposes to launch mobile banking an allow people to use cell-phones in order to borrow money. Read more.

Title: Thinking Big and Scaling Up: Insights from Fazle H. Abed
Duration: 48 minutes

Title:  Achieving the Millenium Development Goals: Strategies from Fazle Abed, founder of BRAC
Duration:  45 minutes

Title: Innovator for the Poor: The Story of Fazle H. Abed and BRAC
Duration: 49 minutes

Title:  Creating a Poverty-Free World: Strategies from Muhammad Yunus of Grameen
Duration:  44 Minutes

Title:  Ending Poverty:  The Citizen Sector Transformed- What it means For You
Duration:  42 minutes

Title: Building Social Business Ventures: Insights from Muhammad Yunus of Grameen
Duration: 46 minutes

Title:  An Entrepreneurial Approach To Stewardship Accountability: Corporate Residual And Global Poverty
Authors:  Raymond W. Y. Kao, Kenneth R. Kao, Rowland R. Kao
ISBN-13:  978-9812560063
Publisher:  World Scientific Publishing Company (December, 2004)

Title:  Creating a World Without Poverty:  Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
Author:  Muhammad Yunus
ISBN-13:  978-1586484934
Publisher:  PublicAffairs (January, 2008)