Empowering Individuals in the Global Community Through Entrepreneurship
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The Whole Planet Foundation is pleased to announce that a member of our Advisory Board and a pioneer in micro-finance Professor Muhammad Yunus was named the winner of the prestigious Seoul Peace Prize.
Professor Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank — a bank established in 1974 — which provides microcredit to entrepreneurs who are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. As a pioneer of the microcredit movement, Prof. Yunus, "The Banker to the Poor" and Grameen Bank now have over 6.5 million borrowers and have stimulated the creation of similar micro-finance organizations around the world.
Yunus is the eighth winner of the Seoul Peace Prize which honors peace efforts by international organizations, politicians, academics and activists. The Prize was established in 1990 and has since awarded 8 organizations or individuals with this honor, including Doctors without Borders, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Oxfam. An awards ceremony will be held in Seoul, South Korea on October 19, 2006 and at that time; Professor Yunus will be awarded $200,000 and honored for creating a new model for providing credit to the poor and for his significant and long-reaching contribution to the eradication of poverty.
Professor Yunus's example and impact was one of the inspirational forces that stimulated Whole Foods Market CEO and founder, John Mackey, to create the Whole Planet Foundation - a global non-profit dedicating to fighting poverty in developing countries where Whole Foods Market sources their products, primarily through microcredit to poor women entrepreneurs. The Whole Planet Foundation is currently partnering with Grameen Trust to provide loans to approximately 2,276 borrowers in Guatemala and Costa Rica, where Whole Foods Market sources coffee, pineapples and bananas, with plans to expand to Honduras, Nicaragua and Assam, India in the near future.
The Whole Planet Foundation extends our warmest congratulations to Professor Yunus for this prestigious honor and appreciation for his global efforts to contribute to the eradication of poverty and catalyze entrepreneurship. We are honored to have his leadership on our Advisory Board.
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