press release *** press release *** press release
Creating a World
Without Poverty
Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
Muhammad Yunus
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
The winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of free markets with the quest for a more humane world – and tells the inspiring stories of companies that are doing this work today
What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger and inequality? To some, it sounds impossible. But Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is doing exactly that. As founder of Grameen Bank, Yunus pioneered micro-credit, the innovative banking programme that provides poor people – mainly women – with small loans they use to launch businesses and lift their families out of poverty. In the past thirty years, micro-credit has spread to every continent and benefited over 100 million families.
But Yunus remained unsatisfied. Much more could be done, he believed, if the dynamics of capitalism could be applied to humanity’s greatest challenges.
Now, in Creating a World Without Poverty, Yunus goes beyond micro-credit to pioneer the idea of social business – a completely new way to use the creative vibrancy of business to tackle social problems from poverty and pollution to inadequate health care and lack of education.
This book describes how Yunus – in partnership with some of the world’s most visionary business leaders – has launched the world’s first purposely designed social business. From collaborating with Danone to produce affordable, nutritious yoghurt for malnourished children in Bangladesh, to building eye-care hospitals that will save thousands of poor people from blindness, Creating a World Without Poverty offers a glimpse of the amazing future Yunus forecasts for a planet transformed by thousands of social businesses. Yunus’s “Next Big Idea” offers a pioneering model for nothing less than a new, more humane form of capitalism.
About the author: Muhammad Yunus was born in Chittagong, a seaport in Bangladesh. The third of fourteen children, he was educated at Dhaka University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He then served as chairman of the economics department at Chittagong University before devoting his life to providing financial and social services to the poorest of the poor. He is the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank and the author of the bestselling Banker to the Poor. Yunus and Grameen Bank are winners of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
7th January 2008, £15.99, 978-1-58648-493-4,
Hardback, 288 pages, PublicAffairs
Professor Yunus will be in the UK 14th-16th February 2008 to promote the book, and is available for interview.
For further information please call Vicky Gilder on
020 7353 7779 or email victoria.gilder@perseusbooks.co.uk
The Perseus Books Group, 69-70 Temple Chambers, 3-7 Temple Avenue, London, EC4Y 0HP
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