MUHAMMAD+YUNUS

Muhammad Yunus was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Bangladesh was established with the partition of Bengal and India in 1947, when the region became East Pakistan. Unfortunately, it was separated from the Western wing of Pakistan and so The Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 actually liberated Bangladesh. After it's independence, the new state went through hard times. They endured famines, natural disasters and widespread poverty, and even political problems with the military. Luckily, the democracy restored in 1991 and has made economic progress. It is now the seventh most populous country, but has a high poverty rate. The per-capita GDP has risen since 1975 and the poverty fell 20%. Muhammad is an advocate for a world without poverty. Coming from the state of Bangladesh and seeing how prosperous the place was, but how much poverty there still was made him want to make a change. He was the founder of Grameen Bank. This banking program provides poor people, mostly women, with small loans to support them in launching businesses and getting their families out of poverty. This bank has spread to every continent and has helped over 100 million families.

We always learn about poverty throughout history, but we tend to focus on India and Asia. I think focusing on individual states in those countries and following their journey would be more beneficial for the students, rather than providing them with a massive amount of information that they might not remember. Muhammad Yunus published a book __Creating a World Without Poverty__, which could be used in the classroom. I think prior to this lesson, students and teachers could discuss, research and make inferences about world economics. We could create a class KWL chart about world economics and then jump into the geography of Bangladesh. We would discuss Bangladesh in it's present state, then read excerpts from Muhammad's book. I want my students to learn how economics can cause poverty. It will be good for them to see that although a state or country's overall GDP is not that bad, small areas might be suffering tremendously. This lesson is an attempt to get my students to understand how economics work with politics and geography. We want to make sure our students gain knowledge about the world and how it works so when they go to cast votes on politics they have a complete understanding of the world, rather than just their country. I would probably have my students work in groups to discuss the Grameen Bank and the pros/cons. Then we could have a debate about the Bank and this would be the way I evaluate my students. I would ask that everyone have something to say, but I would also like them to write a persuasive essay on the Grameen Bank to persuade me to either be 100% for it or against it.