Matthews Family Herald

A good friend of mine, Bram Warrick, asked me if I'd ever heard of "microloans" years ago. I opened the newspaper last Sunday and found that Muhammand Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and father of the "microfinance" movement would be speaking at the University of Virgina that day. I quickly got dressed and heading down to hear him speak.

Muhammad Yunus has helped millions of impoverished people; ninety-something percent of those helped being women. He had the following to say concerning the battle against poverty:

I strongly believe that we can create a poverty-free world, if we want to.... In that kind of world, [the] only place you can see poverty is in the museum. When school children will be on a tour of the poverty museum, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition to continue in a massive way.

... Invisible Berlin Walls must go. We are not even trying to make it happen. Whenever we talk about the people at the bottom or the poor people, our usual reaction is to write a cheque. Okay, take care of them, feed them, clothe them, give them some place to live. But we don't touch the wall. We simply say, let them stay on the other side of the wall, but feed them a little. What I'm saying they don't need your throw-away money, they don't need handouts. They need an opportunity, a fair deal. They don't get a fair deal right now. Poverty is the denial of all human rights. I am talking about establishing their human rights. If we do that the walls will disappear. Poverty will go ...

If you think creating a world without any poverty is impossible, let’s do it. Because it is the right thing to do.

We got rid of colonialism, we got rid of slavery, and we got rid of apartheid – everyone thought each one of them was impossible. Let’s take the next impossible, do it with joy and get it finished with and create a world free from poverty. Let us create the world of our choice.

You can learn more about Muhammad Yunus at: http://muhammadyunus.org/

-James Matthews