Booked by HooksBookEvents: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Book: Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance are Changing the World
Author: Alex Counts
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
About the Author: Alex Counts is President and CEO of the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.–based organization that has grown from modest beginnings in 1997 to become a global network of forty-six microfinance partners in twenty-four countries. Under his leadership, the Grameen Foundation impacts an estimated eighteen million lives in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Arab World. Counts trained to be a catalyst for change under Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder and Managing Director of the Grameen Bank and corecipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
About the Book: Micro-financing is considered one of the most effective strategies in the fight against global poverty. It can be implemented on the massive scale necessary to respond to the urgent needs of the world’s poorest. And now, in Small Loans, Big Changes, author Alex Counts looks at the lives of micro-lending borrowers from the Grameen Foundation in Bangladesh and Chicago.
All of the borrowers profiled here are women of little-to-no means, each struggling to gain financial independence. Readers will discover how, in Bangladesh, these women face off against very poor living conditions and the prejudice of men, while in Chicago, they must overcome crime and other hurdles that come with life in the inner city. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, Small Loans, Big Changes reveals how Muhammad Yunus and his concept of micro-financing has helped those living in poverty achieve real financial independence.