Grameen Bank

As a response to the enormous poverty and severe famines in his home country of Bangladesh, the US-trained economist Muhammad Yunus developed a new banking model that worked without traditional banking security guarantees. The Grameen Bank instead distributed microloans to the poorest of the poor, enabling them to create small businesses. For their efforts in sustainable development assistance, Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.