Written Assignment Unit 2: Entrepreneur Hero

University of the People

BUS 3303-01 Entrepreneurship 1

Jane Burman-Holton, Instructor

November 23, 2022

The site talks about Muhammad Yunus who founded a bank to help the poor families of

Bangladesh. I decided to do some more research on the individual because I already do have an

idea that Bangladesh is one of the most populated countries in the world and also during the

period he started his bank Bangladesh was also one of the poorest nations in the world. The

country was in a terrible situation. This of course attracted my attention and I decided to read

more about the individual.

Humble Beginnings

Muhammad Yunus was a simple son of a jeweler and was born in early 1940 under the British

colony of India in the village of Bathua close to the city of Chittagong. He had very humble

beginnings and was a son of a jeweler. Spending his early childhood in a small village and his

family moved to Chittagong city in 1944. After studying in a village school he moved to

Lamabazar primary school. His mother suffered from a psychological illness. (Wikipedia

contributors, 2022)

Education and active work

Yunus completed his matriculation and ranked top 16 among 39,000 students in the entirety of

East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh). During his school days, he was an active boy scout and

traveled to west Pakistan, India, and even Canada. He completed his BA from Dhaka University

in 1960. He was also active in research work in economics in his college days. (Wikipedia

contributors, 2022)

The Rise

After graduation, he became a lecturer at the University of Chittagong. He then received a

scholarship to study in the United States. He received his PhD from Vanderbilt university in
economic development. From 1969 to 1972, Yunus was an assistant professor of economics

at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. After the Bangladesh liberation War, he

returned to Bangladesh and was appointed to the government's Planning Commission headed by

Nurul Islam. However, he found the job boring and resigned to join Chittagong University as

head of the Economics department.

Recognition and why he is a hero

Entrepreneurship is simply finding a problem in your surroundings and fixing it to help improve

the lives of everyone around you in an innovative a revolutionary manner. Muhammad Yunus to

me is a prime example of a person who was a nobody and came from an unknown village in the

corners of Chittagong and managed to travel the world and change and improve the lives of

millions. He saw that the poor people had to take usurious loans to make their livings where their

profits would often be taken by the lenders. He also noticed that banks for the fear of default

would not give small loans to the poor at reasonable prices. Thus he came up with his own

microcredit business model. He started by lending his own money to the poor and then was

successful in securing loans from the bigger banks for his mission.

In 2006 he won the Nobel Prize and became the first ever Bangladeshi to win the Nobel prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee mentioned:

“Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into

practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many

other countries. Loans to poor people thought any financial security had appeared to be an

impossible idea. From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost
through Grameen Bank, developed micro-credit into an ever more important instrument in the

struggle against poverty.”

He not only changed the life of millions of Bangladeshis with his microcredit system but also

showed the world a new and revolutionary technique that can be used in the struggle against

poverty. Thus to me, Muhammad Yunus is a hero.

Word count: 626 words

References

PBS: The New Heroes. (2005, June 24).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/06/24/

DI2005062401071.html

Wikipedia contributors. (2022, November 23). Muhammad Yunus. Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Yunus