Friday, April 18, 2008

Eco-Libris is balancing out the Swedish edition of Muhammad Yunus' new book

We love all the books we balance out like parents that love all their children equally. But this time, not only that we love the book, but we're also honored to balance it out. Muhammad Yunus is a role model to all of us at Eco-Libris, and therefore we're very proud to announce that Eco-Libris is balancing out the Swedish edition of his book 'Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism'.

This is the latest book from the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, and it is now being published in Swedish by BookHouse Publishing. Professor Yunus himself will attend the launching in Stockholm on April 19th where he will discuss the future of social business. More than 5,000 trees will be planted with Eco-Libris in Malawi, Africa by our planting partner, RIPPLE Africa, on behalf of BookHouse Publishing to balance out this edition. Inside the book you can find our logo ('one tree planted for this book') with details on our vision and operations.

What's the book about? (from Grameen Bank's website):

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 microcredit, the innovative banking program 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, microcredit 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 microcredit 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 businesses. From collaborating with Danone to produce affordable, nutritious yogurt for malnourished children in Bangladesh to building eyecare 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 (from the Nobel Prize website): Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few 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.

Born in 1940 in the seaport city of Chittagong, Professor Yunus studied at Dhaka University in Bangladesh, then received a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt in 1969 and the following year became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. Returning to Bangladesh, 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.

It is a great book of a truly great person who inspire so many people to take a stand and make a difference, after he himself made a difference by helping to lift millions of families around the world out of poverty. Definitely worth reading, and if you can't read Swedish, you can check out the English version of the book (published by Public Affairs - www.publicaffairsbooks.com).


Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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