So thankful for the opportunities living in Boston has presented me. Today I got to see Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus speak in person. His brazen idealism and the tangible action he has put behind changing the world has been a huge inspiration to me.
During his talk today he touched briefly on how the pursuit of money has gotten in the way of global social change. He genuinely believes that “there’s no limit to human creativity” to solve our world’s issues if the globe’s brightest could focus on helping others vs. themselves. It’s one major reason I decided to try out the nonprofit world.
As Yunus discussed loaning money to women, starting solar energy projects, nutrition initiatives, etc. he simply said, “I did these things simply because we had no other choice.”
With everything Yunus has accomplished, he still made social change seem scalable. “If you start a sustainable business and can only employ five people and do nothing else, you’ve still improved the life of those five people.” Sometimes, he said it was simply about empowerment. “Everyone is an entrepreneur given the right opportunity.” He went on to tell the story of how he started giving loans to beggars and how they eventually turned into door-to-door salesman for things like drinks, candy, and toys on their normal begging route. “These beggars, they knew which houses to avoid and which areas would be the strongest buyers. Now, they definitely did not go to Harvard Business School, but they understand market research.”
What an amazing human being.
