A Dialogue with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus
The Sprott School of Business and the Sprott Centre for Social Enterprise proudly present:
“A Dialogue with Dr. Muhammad Yunus”
- Wednesday Sept. 1, 2010
- 2 – 4 p.m.
- Bell Theatre, Minto Centre
- Carleton University
Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, will be receiving an honorary doctorate from Carleton University on Wednesday, September 1. Following the ceremony and reception, Dr. Yunus has requested the opportunity to speak with graduate students and faculty at Carleton who are interested in international development. This special event offers the rare opportunity to interact and share ideas with a Nobel Prize Laureate, whose innovative thinking and initiative have paved new directions for successful sustainable international development.
Space is limited. Please RSVP to Anna Tobias as soon as possible to reserve your place; no later than August 31.
About Dr. Muhammad Yunus
Dr. Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983 in an effort to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
From Dr. Yunus’ personal loan of small amounts of money to destitute basketweavers in Bangladesh in the mid-‘70s, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model operate in more than 100 countries worldwide.
In 2006, Dr. Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”
Last year, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Dr.Yunus with the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour. He is a member of the board of the United Nations Foundation.
His numerous other international awards include the Mohamed Shabdeen Award for Science (1993), Sri Lanka; Humanitarian Award (1993), CARE, USA; World Food Prize (1994), World Food Prize Foundation, USA; lndependence Day Award (1987), Bangladesh’s highest award; King Hussein Humanitarian Leadership Award (2000), King Hussein Foundation, Jordan; Volvo Environment Prize (2003), Volvo Environment Prize Foundation, Sweden; Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth (2004), Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan; Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom Award (2006), Roosevelt Institute of The Netherlands; and the Seoul Peace Prize (2006), Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, Seoul, Korea
Born in 1940 in the seaport city of Chittagong, he studied at Dhaka University in Bangladesh, then received a Fulbright Scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He received his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt in 1969 and, the following year, became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. Returning to Bangladesh, Dr. Yunus headed the economics department at Chittagong University.
From 1993 to 1995, Professor Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women, a post to which he was appointed by the UN secretary general. He has served on the Global Commission of Women’s Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance.