Peace Prize Laureate urges world aid
Muhammad Yunus cites capitalism as potential tool to combat world poverty; 60 locals travel to Minnesota to attend 2008 forum

By Stephanie Johnson

Mirror Copy Editor
March 13, 2008

Social business, women’s education and grassroots level sustainable aid—three remedies that have succeeded in combating world poverty. At the 20th annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum on March 7-8, at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., guests listened to speakers Muhammad Yunus, Greg Mortenson and others to understand what individuals can do to at the community level to combat poverty and restore peace in the world.

Under the forum’s theme, “Striving for Peace: Investing in Community,” 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and professor Yunus spoke of how the principles of capitalism can be put to work to help the world’s poor. His social business theory prompted him to found Grameen Bank in 1983, a micro-lending institution designed to provide low-cost loans to the poor.

“There’s only one concept of business: Business to make a profit,” Yunus said. “Poverty is created by the system we’ve built, the institutions, the businesses. I feel that the people that built this theory have a one-dimensional view of human beings.”

From its 2,400 branches worldwide, including one located on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Grameen Bank lends to more than six million people, 97 percent of whom are women. Yunus noticed that lending to women benefited families more than when men borrowed the money.

“Women have a longer vision,” he said. “My story is about how much the whole world is deprived because women are left out.”

Mortenson, New York Times best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, shares Yunus’s opinion that women’s education is a critical step in ending world poverty.

“If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. If you educate a girl, you educate a community,” he said. “Every single child on this planet should have the opportunity, the privilege, to have an education.”

In an effort that began with a single school, Mortenson built more than 60 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing more than 25,000 children, including 14,000 girls, a place to learn. The Taliban, however, has destroyed several schools and even killed female students in opposition to women’s education. “I think their greatest fear is not the bullet, but the pen,” Mortenson said.

He also believes that educating women will reduce terrorism because, in Islamic culture, mothers must approve their son’s commitment to jihad. “A woman who has an education is much less likely to endorse her son resorting to violence,” he said.

Augustana’s contribution to the forum included assistant professor of philosophy Stephen Minister’s seminar, “Development and the Human Good: Beyond Economics.” Minister’s interactive seminar discussed the many forms of poverty beyond the realm of economics. He believes that measuring a country’s development by gross national product (GNP) per capita and other economic factors neglects personal development.

“This isn’t to deny that economic development is important,” Minister said. “But it doesn’t quite seem to be the whole story.”

Minister encouraged his audience to consider what goods development efforts aim to achieve other than economically. Especially important is what goods are required for freedom and what should be done if aiding a culture’s self-determination means promoting the exclusion of certain individuals, particularly women.

“It’s important that these goods be relevant to the cultures in which they are intended,” Minister said. “There isn’t just one economic problem—there are many ways people can be impoverished. If projects are measured only in terms of economic growth, we miss out on seeing other growths.”

Augustana also contributed to the forum through Peace Scholars juniors Kara Kingma and Clarissa Thompson, and through the representation of the Augustana Coalition for Social Justice (ACSJ) at the International Peace Fair, which is designed to help guests learn more about the practical applications of the forum’s message.

According to marketing and communications staff member Brad Heegel, 60 students, faculty and Sioux Falls community members attended the forum. Sophomore attendee Beth Singleton believes the forum offered insight into the intricacies of world poverty and the challenges of overcoming it.

“To help improve a third world country, we can’t just go in and give them food. We need to help them by teaching them how to do it on their own,” she said. “It’s a really good reminder that it’s good to dream big.”

Economics professor Reynold Nesiba has mixed feelings about Yunus’s message. “Muhammad Yunus seems to have an awful lot of faith in markets and very little faith in government and civil society,” Nesiba said. “His proposal for social business seems like an encroachment of markets in what has traditionally been the domain of government.”

Other highlights of the forum included an interview with Columbia University professor of health policy and management Jeffrey Sachs via satellite, an interfaith worship and a debate-style conversation between Yunus, professor Ole Mjøs of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Mjøs brought warm greetings from the Nobel Institute to the five Lutheran colleges sponsoring the forum: Augsburg (Minneapolis, Minn), Luther (Decoarah, Iowa), St. Olaf (Northfield, Minn), Concordia and Augustana. “We don’t collaborate with everybody—we are highly selective,” Mjøs said. “And so we collaborate with you.”

Next year’s Nobel Peace Prize Forum will be March 6-7, at St. Olaf College, featuring 2007 Peace Prize Laureate Al Gore.