ET BureauCHENNAI: Giving a boost to the entrepreneurship spirit of the aspiring youngsters, Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and winner of Nobel Prize for peace, called out to them to be job creators instead of job seekers. "Unemployment of young people is a big issue everywhere. I tell them, repeat again and again (that) I’m not a job seeker, I’m a job creator," he said.
Speaking to a packed audience at the event - An Evening with Professor Muhammad Yunus, organised by the Chennai chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), he noted that the very idea of job seeking was flawed. "Human beings came to this planet not with a job application in their hands. They are go-getters. That is how we have survived on this planet. That is in our DNA. We are problem solvers..we are creative people," he said.
The social entrepreneur from Bangladesh who pioneered the concepts of microfinance and microcredit quipped that a job is the most 'uncreative' thing one can think of. "No matter how brilliant you are, in a job, you start at the bottom. You shape your life according to the desire of your boss. This is a distortion of human being. Human beings should be free..," he said.
Grameen Bank which was founded by Yunus in 1983 on microfinancing model impacted the lives of many underprivileged Bangladeshis who did not qualify for traditional bank loans. Encouraging the youth to venture into such social businesses he recalled that his initiative too was in the same spirit. "I started Grameen bank in the spirit of social business..without thinking of owning a single share in the company. But the idea became popular,"
Noting that his idea was to get people out of poverty, he warned that poverty was a threat to peace. "Poverty is not caused by poor people, but by the system..It will remain a constant threat to social harmony because we keep pushing them (the poor) for no reason of their own," he said. Yunus is currently the Chairman of the The Yunus Centre at Dhaka, a think-tank for issues related to social business.
Speaking to a packed audience at the event - An Evening with Professor Muhammad Yunus, organised by the Chennai chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), he noted that the very idea of job seeking was flawed. "Human beings came to this planet not with a job application in their hands. They are go-getters. That is how we have survived on this planet. That is in our DNA. We are problem solvers..we are creative people," he said.
The social entrepreneur from Bangladesh who pioneered the concepts of microfinance and microcredit quipped that a job is the most 'uncreative' thing one can think of. "No matter how brilliant you are, in a job, you start at the bottom. You shape your life according to the desire of your boss. This is a distortion of human being. Human beings should be free..," he said.
Grameen Bank which was founded by Yunus in 1983 on microfinancing model impacted the lives of many underprivileged Bangladeshis who did not qualify for traditional bank loans. Encouraging the youth to venture into such social businesses he recalled that his initiative too was in the same spirit. "I started Grameen bank in the spirit of social business..without thinking of owning a single share in the company. But the idea became popular,"
Noting that his idea was to get people out of poverty, he warned that poverty was a threat to peace. "Poverty is not caused by poor people, but by the system..It will remain a constant threat to social harmony because we keep pushing them (the poor) for no reason of their own," he said. Yunus is currently the Chairman of the The Yunus Centre at Dhaka, a think-tank for issues related to social business.
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