Each of you has the power to change the world (Commencement address by Muhammad Yunus)

A great read, it makes you believe that if you do something you believe in sincerely and keep doing it consistently, then it will definitely pay some day, even reading first 3-4 paragraphs will convince you on why Muhammad Yunus(proud initiator of Grameen Bank) deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Worth reading –

Commencement address by Muhammad Yunus
"Each of you has the power to change the world"

Below is the prepared text of the Commencement address by Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, for MIT's 142nd Commencement held June 6, 2008.

 http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/yunus-0606.html  

Excerpt – Now, in hindsight, I can joke about it. When people ask me, "How did you figure out all the rules and procedures that is now known as Grameen system ?" My answer is : "That was very simple and easy. Whenever I needed a rule or a procedure in our work, I just looked at the conventional banks to see what they do in a similar situation. Once I learned what they did, I just did the opposite. That's how I got our rules. Conventional banks go to the rich, we go to the poor; their rule is -- "the more you have, the more you get." So our rule became -- "the less you have higher attention you get. If you have nothing, you get the highest priority." They ask for collateral, we abandoned it, as if we had never heard of it. They need lawyers in their business, we don't. No lawyer is involved in any of our loan transactions. They are owned by the rich, ours is owned by the poorest, the poorest women to boot. I can go on adding more to this list to show how Grameen does things quite the opposite way. 

Was it really a systematic policy æ to do it the opposite way ? No, it wasn't. But that's how it turned out ultimately, because our objective was different. I had not even noticed it until a senior banker admonished me by saying : Dr. Yunus, you are trying to put the banking system upside down." I quickly agreed with him. I said : "Yes, because the banking system is standing on its head."