This blog was created by Grameen Foundation in collaboration with the Microcredit Summit Campaign, and RESULTS to celebrate the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Professor Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank on December 10 in Oslo, Norway. Together, the three organizations have been involved in fighting global poverty through microfinance for more than 15 years.

The experiment which Professor Yunus launched in 1976 with just $27 has inspired a worldwide movement that now reaches more than 100 million people across the globe. At the heart of microfinance is the belief that even the poor deserve access to financial services. Relying on their traditional skills and entrepreneurial instincts, they use the loans, often less than US$200, to buy tools and supplies for ventures such as weaving, breeding livestock, or providing cell phone communications. As each loan is repaid-usually within six months to a year-the money is recycled as a loan to others, thus expanding each dollar's impact. And, average repayment rates are over 95 percent - far exceeding the rates for college loans in the U.S.

About Grameen Foundation

Grameen Foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to empowering the world's poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty through access to financial services and to information. Founded in 1997 by a group of friends who were inspired by the work of Grameen Bank, our global network of microfinance institution (MFI) partners touches more than 11 million lives across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East. For more information on Grameen Foundation, please visit www.grameenfoundation.org.

About the Microcredit Summit Campaign

The Microcredit Summit Campaign is a collaborative effort of microcredit practitioners, advocates, educational institutions, donor agencies, international financial institutions, non-governmental organizations and others involved with microcredit. It was launched in 1997 to reach 100 million of the world's poorest families, especially the women of those families, with financial services. In 2006, it set a new goal of reaching 175 million families and ensuring that 100 million families rise out of extreme poverty. For more information, please visit www.microcreditsummit.org.

About RESULTS

RESULTS is a nonprofit grassroots advocacy organization, committed to creating the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty. RESULTS is committed to individuals exercising their personal and political power by lobbying elected officials for effective solutions and key policies that affect hunger and poverty. For more information, please visit www.results.org.