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KPBS Midday Edition

Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus To Address UC San Diego Graduates

Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus speaks during a debate hosted by the Associated Press, “Regions in Transformation: South Asia,” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2016.
Associated Press
Nobel Peace Laureate Muhammad Yunus speaks during a debate hosted by the Associated Press, “Regions in Transformation: South Asia,” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2016.

Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus To Address UC San Diego Graduates
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Muhammad Yunus To Address UC San Diego Graduates GUEST:Muhammad Yunus, founder, Grameen Bank

I'm Tom Fudge, you are listening to KPBS Midday Edition . Tomorrow, UC San Diego holds its campuswide Commencement ceremony. The keynote speaker is a man who's made history. Muhammed Yunus is a native of Bangladesh and the winner of the Nobel Prize for peace and 26. -- 2006. He is could mean -- his Grameen Bank has made thousands world wild -- why. He joins us to give us a taste of what kind of message he will bring to tomorrow's graduates. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. I heard an interview in which you said you believe human beings are born with an unlimited creative capacity. Is our education, in your opinion, is it designed to tap that? Yes. Human beings are creative with enormous capacity. Our education system has not done a good job with that yet. Our education system is oriented towards the job serving, taking a job, seeking a job. It is job oriented education. The system tried to create young people -- turn young people into job ready situation. That's the wrong direction. Human beings are not created for working for someone else. Human beings are go-getters, problem solvers, they create their own destiny for themselves, using there. Creative power. A job is the end of creativity, you are not using your creative power, for something great or big. Having said that, commencement speeches are meant to inspire college graduates. If you're allowed to inspire young people, what would you like to say to them? I will say go ahead and change the world. Don't take it as it is, your job is to create the world that you want. Don't submit to the world that you have inherited, taken -- take it up and design the world that you want to live in. That's what your task is. You have the creative capacity, you have enormous creative power. Become aware of it, and then use it. If you don't use your creative power it will be wasted. You've spent 40 years helping people start businesses, can you talk of what humans Byard -- what inspired you to get in the business of lending out microloans? I was teaching in a university in Bangladesh in the mid-70s. We were in during a famine situation. In a situation like that, I was trying to make myself helpful, in some way, to people who were suffering. I would go to the village of the day and see if I could be of some help, to somebody even for a day. I did small things. Then I saw the loansharking in the village. It was an ugly thing to see. Humans exploiting other humans in such cool ways. I was feeling helpless, I thought that I could do something. I could run the money myself. If I lend the money, people could come to me and not the loan shark. This was in 1976, it became very popular. Everyone was coming to me, I was feeling happy about it, then my money was running out. I went to the bank to see if they would lend the money and they said no. I offered myself as a guarantee or. They accepted that and the second phase of work began. As a group, the bank became reluctant to continue, they thought it would collapse. A created bank myself, rather than run after the banking system. The gray mean -- Grameen Bank became nationwide and now it's all over the world. The work I did became known as microcredit or micro-finance. We now have those in America. There are institutions in San Diego that a been inspired by you. I came to San Diego 20 years ago. I came to support the people who are a -- organizing the microcredit organizations. With all the loans the Grameen Bank is given out over the years, you have 1 million stories about how those loans have helped people. You have a favorite story? Every one of them is favorite, starting with a $30 loan so people could start their own life and business and prove to themselves that they can be productive. It's a global phenomenon, nearly 200,000,000 people, particularly women receive microcredit loans all over the world. Each one is proven you can be literate, you can be in a sad situation. You can change your life if the financial system is open to you. The basic theme of the financial system is, the more you have the more you can get. They are always looking for people with lots of money. My guest has been Muhammed Yunus. Founder of the Grameen Bank , worldwide provider of microloans to the poor. He will be delivering the commencement address tomorrow, at UC San Diego. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Muhammad Yunus, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, will deliver the keynote address at UC San Diego's all-campus commencement ceremony Saturday.

Dubbed by the Nobel committee as a "banker to the poorest of the poor," Yunus founded Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. It loans money to financially disadvantaged people to encourage entrepreneurship.

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What does Yunus plan on telling UC San Diego graduates?

"Go ahead and chase the world, don't take it as it is," he told KPBS Midday Edition on Friday. "Your job is to create the world that you want. So it's not submit to the world that you have inherited, but you take it up and create the world you want to design, you want to live in. And that's your task."