Professor Muhammad Yunus with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on April 16, 2009 received Professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Healthcare delegation to the World Healthcare Congress at her office. During a 90 minute meeting with the 14-member Grameen delegation, Professor Yunus briefed the Secretary about Grameen's healthcare plans and social business initiatives. Secretary Clinton, who visited Grameen Bank in 1995, and is a long-time proponent of microcredit for the poor, offered her support to Grameen's healthcare programme.
Professor Yunus discussed, in particular, the proposed creation of a Grameen Medical College and teaching hospital as joint venture collaboration with a leading school of medicine of a premier US university. Professor Yunus updated the US Secretary of State on the latest developments in Grameen family. He emphasized the importance of a new legislation to create microfinance banks in the USA and other countries.
Secretary Hillary Clinton sought Professor Yunus's assistance in crafting a bill for that purpose. She pointed out that microfinance can play a key role during the current financial crisis by helping the unemployed to create self-employment. The two leaders also discussed issues of global warming and environmental degradation and its threat to Bangladesh.
Professor Yunus, pointing out that climate change was an issue of life and death for Bangladesh, requested Hillary Clinton's support for global action and initiatives to help Bangladesh counteract the effects of climate change.
He requested the Secretary to pay special attention to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and help them cope with the current global financial crisis. He also sought her help in allowing duty-free access for garment products from Bangladesh to the USA.
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"... I mentioned in my testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, that the President's late mother was an expert in microfinance and worked in Indonesia. I have been involved in microfinance since 1983, when I first met Muhammad Yunus and had Muhammad come to see us in Arkansas so that we could use the lessons from the Grameen Bank in our own country."
Excerpts from Senator Hillary Clinton speech at USAID on January 23, 2009 |
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The State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2009 reports that by December 31, 2007, 3,552 MFIs reported of reaching 154,825,825 clients with a current loan. Of these borrowers, 106,584,679 were among the poorest when they started with the microcredit program. This achievement is the fulfillment of a goal set a decade ago. Approximately 90.6%of the poorest clients reported are in Asia, a continent that is home to approximately 63.5% of the world's people living on less than US$ 1 a day.
Since 2000, the Microcredit Summit Campaign (MSC) began independently verifying aspects of the data. In the 2000 State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report, 78 institutions, representing two thirds of the poorest clients reported, had their data verified by a third party. This year, data from 284 institutions was verified, representing 80% of the total poorest clients reported or 84,916,899 poorest families.
http://www.microcreditsummit.org/
state_of_the_campaign_report/
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