It is interesting what new things you find out everyday by talking to different people. Today I talked to Alvaro online about various things. He asked me what was my ideal job. So I told him, in a world where we are not governed by money, I would love to be a photographer and travel the world. So cutting the story short, he showed me a link to a video on www.ted.com:
You must take some time out to watch it if you are a humanitarian like me. Even if you are not, you should still watch it. I just realised I have the wiki page of 2 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates opened on my browser: Liu Xiaobo and Muhammad Yunus. The former was one of the student leaders in the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 and the latter was the Bangladeshi ‘Banker’ who managed to change the lives of millions. After reading about Yunus’ life, I think he’s become my new role model. A well-deserving recipient of the Nobel Peace price, Yunus came up with the concept of microfinancing. Instead of donation to the poor, Yunus created a bank, Grameen Bank, that gives out micro-credits to the poor. He found that a small amount of money can make a world of difference to the poorest of the population. Instead of building schools and so forth, the idea is to fund entrepreneurs in poor parts of Africa, Indian subcontinents etc who might have nothing. Instead of donations, they are given a loan of maybe up to 100 USD to help start their business. In this way, people are given a sense of purpose and they found that this also boost the rate of education amongst the poor as they begin to see the importance of education and knowledge.
I think this is a great idea. Perhaps I will talk to Richard about it next time we meet and see if we could implement similar projects in Zimbabwe where I plan to visit next year. So much to think about…