Yunus addresses 7th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture

A four-minute standing ovation was received, by Dr Yunus on July 11, 2009, at the Johannesburg City Hall, South Africa. He was addressing the Seventh Nelson Mandela Annual Address Lecture. Two excerpts follow:

Social Business is Crazy?

"I am talking about investing money in a social business. People give away their money – thousands of dollars of it – and no-one thinks they are crazy. How come when I say invest money in a social business then I am crazy? That is the most appropriate thing to do. If we had done that, we could reduce all the problems we have.  We can create social business to address poverty, to bring nutrition, clean drinking water and [allow] people to sustain themselves.

We have done that in Bangladesh. Whenever I see a problem, I immediately go and create a company and that’s what I do all my life. I created Grameen Bank to solve people’s problems. Not for myself, but for the people it helps."

Council Of The Elders

"You keep your culture, I am creating a counter-culture."

"We wanted to focus on women because we saw that when money goes to the family through women, it does so much more than going through men. The more we lent money to women, the more we were shouted at and condemned. We had male opposition and it was translated into religious opposition.

People said we were destroying their culture; that women needed to be kept at home because they weren’t supposed to have or handle money. They said, “You are destroying them by giving them money; they are not supposed to have money.” I said, “You keep your culture, I am creating a counter culture.”

Ever since then I have felt so strongly and said culture is useless unless it is supported by counter culture. People create culture; if people hide behind culture, that’s a dead culture.   Dead culture is good for the museum, not good for human society. Human society moves on, evolves and creates its own culture, therefore taking the culture step by step. We defied that culture that wanted to remain a dead culture."

Downlead the full text of the speech here