An Afternoon with Professor Yunus: Creating A World of Three Zeros
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“Making money is a happiness. And that’s a great incentive. Making other people happy is a super-happiness.”
These are the words of Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist world-famous for starting the microfinance movement. That movement is just part of Yunus’ mission to “put poverty in the museums.” A charismatic visionary, as much at ease with global leaders as he is with the poorest of street beggars, Professor Yunus believes everyone can play a part in reducing poverty. The best way they can do this, he believes, is not by writing out a check to a charity or through the trickle-down effect of hard-headed capitalism, but by means of a model that lies somewhere between the two. He calls this model “social business.”
Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing (GCCN) based in Dhaka, Bangladesh was founded by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus in 2011. The GCCN has realized significant growth and success since its inception and now has more than 500 students enrolled at its new college site. Plans for continued expansion include establishing an academic partnership with Adelphi University in addition to continuing their relationship with the Glasgow Caledonian University. In January 2023, Adelphi’s College of Nursing and Public Health Dean Deborah Hunt and faculty member Ani Jacob went to Dhaka on a weeklong fact-finding mission to determine areas of collaboration, and were impressed with the quality of GCCN’s curriculum.
This event is sponsored by the Hagedorn Lectureship on Corporate Social Responsibility.
Light refreshments will be served
About the Speaker
Muhammad Yunus
Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank and a pioneer of the concepts of microcredit and social business. He has founded more than 50 social business companies in Bangladesh. In 2006, Professor Yunus and Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In March 2012, for his constant innovation and enterprise, Fortune magazine named Professor Yunus as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.” At the Opening Ceremony of the 2020 Olympic Games Tokyo, 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.
Professor Muhammad Yunus is the recipient of 63 honorary degrees from universities across 26 countries. He has received 143 awards from 33 countries including state honors 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 magazine, Newsweek and Forbes.
Professor Yunus stresses that there is “no going back” to the old ways of thinking and doing. He proposes new roads to a new destination by creating a “World of 3 Zeros” – zero net carbon emission, zero wealth concentration to end poverty once and for all, and zero unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in everyone.