page_title: Grameen Bank
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Grameen Bank / History
caption_attribution_description: w:Muhammad Yunus, founder of w:Grameen Bank
context_page_description: The Grameen Bank is a community development bank started in Bangladesh. They give small loans to poor people without asking for money before the loan is given. The word "Grameen", is made of the word "gram" or "village", and means "of the village". The system of this bank is based on the idea that the poor have skills but have no chance to use their skills without some money. The bank also controls some businesses, such as fabric, telephone and energy companies. Most of the banks loans go to women.
  The Grameen Bank was started 1976 when Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Fulbright scholar and Professor at University of Chittagong, researched how to provide banking for the rural poor. In October 1983, the Grameen Bank Project was made into an independent bank by the government. The group and its first member, Muhammad Yunus, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
  Some people have said the banks prices are too expensive and put people in a debt-trap. Some have also said that the bank would not work if people did not give donations. At the same time, it is often seen as a success story in microfinance and as the guide for other groups around the world.
context_section_description: Muhammad Yunus, the banks first member, earned a Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University in the United States. During the Bangladesh famine of 1974 he gave a small loan of USD 27 to a group of 42 families so that they could make small items and sell them without owing too much money. Yunus believed that a lot less people would be poor around Bangladesh if they could find small loans.
  The  Grameen Bank ("Bank of the Villages", in the Bengali language) is the product of Yunus' ideas. The bank began as a research project by Yunus and the Rural Economics Project at Bangladesh's University of Chittagong.  They gave out some small loans and waited to know what would happen. In 1976, the village of Jobra and other villages surrounding the University of Chittagong became the first places where Grameen Bank loaned money to people. The Bank was very successful and with support from the main Bangladesh Bank, gave loans for the Tangail District (to the north of the capital, Dhaka). The bank's success continued and it soon gave loans in many areas of Bangladesh. On 2 October 1983, the project was made into an independent bank, by the Bangladeshi government. Bankers from ShoreBank, a community development bank in Chicago, helped Yunus by making Grameen Bank a part of Shorebank with money from the Ford Foundation. After the 1998 flood of Bangladesh, many people could not pay their debts to Grameen for a few years. By the beginning of 2005, the bank had loaned over USD 4.7 billion to poor people.
  Grameen Bank now loans money to poor people all over India. By 2006, India had over 2,100 Grameen Bank branches. Its success has inspired similar projects in more than 40 countries around the world and has made World Bank to take an initiative to finance Grameen-type schemes.
  The bank gets help with money. In the mid-1990s, the bank started getting most of its funding from the central bank of Bangladesh. More recently, Grameen has been borrowing money. The Government of Bangladesh guarantees that money borrowed by the Grameen Bank will be repaid.
caption: Nobel Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, the banks first member
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