Time for an Asian social stock exchange-Durreen Shahnaz

Durreen Shahnaz, is an Associate Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at National University of Singapore advocates in the daily Star for an Asian Stock Exchange

As I write this article, the storm in the financial markets continues — stock markets in Asia, Europe and the US all are going through roller coaster rides, people fear bank runs and governments are pulling together trillion dollars worth of rescue packages. In this sadly crazy historic moment, when every current option is looking bleak and governments are busy cleaning up the private sector mess, perhaps it is a good time to look some distance into the future toward a gleam of hope for a kinder and gentler form of capitalism. My suggestion for that is to put together effective regional ‘social stock exchanges’ in each continent that can spearhead social good through capital markets. I believe Asia is ripe to take the lead in meeting this challenge.

Giving the poor the business-USA Today

Nobel Prize winner Yunus has a new idea for attacking poverty through capitalism: Enlist companies whose mission is to change the world, writes Alan M. Webber in USA Today. I agree with the observation of Alan when he said at the end of the article that ‘It’s the kind of creative economic thinking that could earn Yunus a second Nobel Prize — this time in economics’.

Follow his writing in full:
Muhammad Yunus has already changed the world once, which is why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. By creating the Grameen Bank and using microfinance to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh, he demonstrated a transformational model for eliminating poverty.

Muhammad Yunus and the concept of social finance-azaroff.com

William Azaroff to whom banking is only marginally interesting but using the platform of banking to solve social problems is a powerful draw, writes in his own blog azaroff.com :

Muhammad Yunus At Vancity, where I work, we recently created a division called Social Finance. This is where our Business Banking department now resides, as well as Commercial Mortgages and our amazing Community Business Banking team, where many of our most innovative and socially relevant products and services are generated.

Creating and naming this new division was an interesting risk, and as soon as I heard the name Social Finance, I thought to myself: Holy crap I can’t believe I get to work here.

Singapore has room for social business-Nobel Laureate

Not-for-profit schemes can make society here ‘more balanced and humane’ writes Cheong Suk-Wai in Strait Times:

SINGAPORE is a global business centre with room for ‘social business’, according to Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

That is what the Bangladeshi economist and a pioneer of micro-credit calls not-for-profit businesses and programmes set up to generate jobs and other opportunities to help those trapped in poverty.

‘Social business’ is not charity, but more in keeping with the adage: It’s better to teach a man how to fish than to give him fish.

Speaking to The Straits Times here yesterday, Professor Yunus said: ‘The business proposition is for the poor to pay a tiny amount of money for you to take care of their needs.

Face to Face: Liam Black talks to Muhammad Yunus

Liam Black, one of the social success of England talks to Muhammad Yunus on difficulties and prospect of social business, the conversation published in Social Enterprise :

Professor Muhammed Yunus has made his name as one of the most successful and innovative social entrepreneurs in the world. In 2006, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for setting up the Grameen Bank, which has given small loans to thousands of people in Bangladesh, helping them to start up their own businesses and lift themselves out of poverty. Now, he is transforming the world of big business by joining forces with multi-national dairy firm, Danone, and water services company, Veolia, to bring nutritional yoghurt and drinking water to the masses. Here, he talks to one of England’s own social success, Liam Black, about the future of social business, the battle with fat cats and what he would do with a magic wand.

Liam Black

I’m a social entrepreneur and have been running a busy restaurant chain called Fifteen, which was set up by one of our top chefs, Jamie Oliver. We take on young homeless people and those coming out of prison and turn them into chefs. We invest in their business ideas when they leave us. Before that, I ran a charity called the Furniture Resource Centre in Liverpool, which we turned into a social business, so I knew all about you. We grew from a small, very traditional charity, but moved into selling products and services to enable poor people to furnish their homes. I have just given up the Fifteen role and set up a business which banks on the same idea as you. People say they love the social business idea, but really it’s crap, isn’t it? Capitalism’s not going to change. Danone could afford to do it. There are people out there who believe in it though. The challenge you have is how to turn people onto it. I believe in it.

‘Each of you has the power to change the world’-Muhammad Yunus at MIT

Below is the prepared text of the Commencement address by Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, for MIT’s 142nd Commencement held June 6, 2008.

Good Morning:

It as a very special privilege for me to speak at the commencement ceremony of this prestigious institution.

What a wonderful feeling to be here today. To be with all of you, some of the brightest minds in the world, right at a moment when you decide the path you will embark on in life. You represent the future of the world. The choices that you will make for yourself will decide the fate of mankind. This is how it has always been. Sometimes we are aware of it, most of the time we are not. I hope you’ll remain aware of it and make an effort to be remembered not simply as a creative generation but as a socially-conscious creative generation. Try it.

I had no idea whether my life would someday be relevant to anyone else’s. But in the mid-seventies, out of frustration with the terrible economic situation in Bangladesh I decided to see if I could make myself useful to one poor person a day in the village next door to the university campus where I was teaching. I found myself in an unfamiliar situation. Out of necessity I had to find a way out. Since I did not have a road-map, I had to fall back on my basic instinct to do that. At any moment I could have withdrawn myself from my unknown path, but I did not. I stubbornly went on to find my own way. Luckily, at the end, I found it. That was microcredit and Grameen Bank.

Muhammad Yunus on Grameen Danone-a social business in youtube

Follow Professor Muhammad Yunus on Grameen Danone – a social business venture in youtube

Out to maximize social gains, not profit-Muhammad Yunus with NY Times

The following is an interview of Professor Muhammad Yunus given to New York Times way back to December 9, 2006 after Yunus associated himself with Danone in his venture of social business, I am specially impressed with his answer to the need of job for the Grameen graduates at the end of the interview:

It was March 2005 and Muhammad Yunus, the microcredit pioneer who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, had just agreed — over a handshake during lunch at a Paris restaurant — to start a “social business” with the head of Groupe Danone, the French food company.

Muhammad Yunus’ Social Business-Saving the world with a cup of yogurt

Sheridan Prasso reports in Fortune magazine regarding his observation on Professor Yunus’ first vnture about social business:

Along a dirt road in Bangladesh’s green, fertile heartland, 140 miles northwest of Dhaka, workers in flip-flops are hauling bricks, pouring cement and hammering boards. The object of their labor: a small yogurt factory being built by Danone, the French food company, on the outskirts of Bogra.

It may not look like much, but the one-story building behind a wrought-iron gate is the epicenter of a Big New Idea – one that Muhammad Yunus, the winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work on microcredit, thinks can revolutionize a world still being transformed by his first big idea.

Davos 2008: Bill Gates’ Creative Capitalism and Muhammad Yunus’ Social Business-Vivian Norris de Montaigu

Vivian Norris de Montaigu, writes in The Huffington Post on the closeness of Bill Gates’ Creative Capitalism and Muhammad Yunus’ Social Business:

The way it works is that instead of giving money away to a non-profit charity, you help create businesses — in fact new business models. As little as a $25 can motivate an entrepreneur in the developing world, by funding a microcredit organization such as Kiva.org, which gives out small loans. This process allows that money to grow and be reused and help create true sustainability, unlike the charity dollar which must be raised each year. Now try the same thing on the corporate level and you can begin to see that it is truly possible to create a “world without poverty”, and that poverty is indeed an “artificial construction.” These words have been stated time and again by Professor Muhammad Yunus’, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and they are put forth in his latest book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. Professor Yunus, also known as the “banker to the poor” is asking that the poor be poor no more and is inviting major international corporations to not make a profit off the poor, but actually create sustainable businesses which also provide a public service, be it in the areas of health, technology, infrastructure, communications, education, etc.