Dr Yunus: The One Who Can Change the World
Business is usually portrayed as a means to make money. However, this does not mean that businesses are filthy, money-generating pigs. What people don’t see, is that business is a way to bring peace to society. This is the message that stuck with me from a speech I attended during my school holidays…
On the 11th of October 2014, my brother, father and I attended a public speech on social business, presented by Professor Dr Yunus, a Nobel Laureate. It was held at the Sir Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Melbourne.
Dr Yunus gave a very inspirational speech about how he got to his position now from when he was in a rural village in Bangladesh, where he saw kids suffering from night blindness. He met a doctor and asked the cause of night blindness and if there was a cure. The doctor said there was a cure, well 2 cures. You could either give the child Vitamin A tablets regularly, or get the child to eat lots of vegetables. Dr Yunus was against the thought of giving kids medication, and that certain tablets could possibly be fake.
Therefore, he resorted to the second option which was vegetables. He went all around Bangladesh encouraging rural families to grow and eat their own vegetables. But when he first started, the families could not grow their own crops as they did not have any seeds. At that moment, Yunus’ seed business idea sparked. Why not provide the families with the seeds required to grow their own crops?
Another success story I heard was about Yunus’ solar electricity project. He was looking for a new business opportunity when he stumbled upon solar electricity. He was trying to sell solar panels, but no one believed the fact that you could harness the power of the sun in the form of electricity. However, when one person bought it, their neighbors asked themselves ‘if they can have a solar system, why can’t we?’ This way, he was starting to sell 10 to 15 solar systems a day. Now, at the course of 17 years, their company has sold more than a million solar units. Their expectation is 3 million over the next three years.
Another story he talked about was the one about sanitary toilets as Dr Yunus noticed that it was a major health problem in the rural Bangladesh. So Dr Yunus made a rule where if people needed a loan they had to dig a hole first. ‘No hole, no loan’. Once the person had finished digging their hole, they got the loan to set up the ‘toilet’.
What inspired me most is that the majority of Yunus’ profits goes to the business itself and the rural people are a part of this business. So, when the business expands, the poor people get the benefits. It inspired me because this is unlike most corporal executives who keep all the money for themselves, Yunus gives the money to the members who matter most to him.
This speech also gave me an opportunity to learn about the ‘traditional employment system’, which theoretical acts like a sucking ‘machine’. This ‘machine’ sucks a whole bunch of job-seekers from the bottom, and spits out only the luckiest ones on the top. The people stuck at the bottom are jobless and miserable, on the other hand, the people on the top are making an income without even having to do anything. Yunus mentioned that this system is leaving billions of people jobless around the world. This system, in his opinion, is punishing the unemployed. Yunus wants to break this grueling system by introducing the social business.
Social business will create opportunities for those who have been punished by the system, to fight back. Basically, using the social business, a bright, imaginative and young job-seeker will turn into a clever, convenient and successful job-creator.
His speech made me think, is this the man who can change the face of the world?
