JEDDAH, 1 April 2006 — Mohammed Jameel, president of Abdul Latif Jameel Community Services Programs, learned better techniques for helping the poor from the pioneers of micro credit during a recent visit to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.
“I was able to see and hear first hand the moving stories from those that had borrowed from the Grameen organization and improved their lives as a result,” an ALJ statement quoting Mohammed Jameel said yesterday. “These findings will be usefully employed in improving the micro credit techniques being introduced to the Middle Eastern region in the form of the Grameen-Abdul Latif Jameel Pan-Arab initiative,” the statement said.
Professor Muhammad Yunus, who is internationally recognized for his work in poverty alleviation and empowerment of poor women, founded the Grameen Bank, a micro-credit institution created to provide working capital for self-employment.
The innovative approach to poverty alleviation pioneered by Yunus in a small village in Bangladesh has inspired a global micro-credit movement reaching out to millions of poor women on all five continents.
Yunus’ autobiography, “Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the Battle Against Poverty,” has been translated into 17 languages.
The Grameen-Abdul Latif Jameel Pan Arab initiative aims to reduce poverty through micro credit. It focuses on providing capacity building and financial assistance to poverty-focused micro-credit institutions operating in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Grameen-Abdul Latif Jameel Middle East initiative is the natural expansion of the Abdul Latif Jameel group social programs, which focus on job creation through vocational training and micro credit lending in Saudi Arabia.
