Muhammad Yunus spoke in Kane Hall to educate UW students on micro-lending and solving global poverty Tuesday. More than 700 students and local VIPs packed into the crowded auditorium at 11:30 a.m. waiting to hear last years' Nobel Peace Prize winner speak.

Yunus asked the crowd to literally "stand up and fight against poverty," at which point many students stood in unification pledging to make an impact on local and global poverty.

"It was a powerful and uplifting way to open a speech about a topic that can be very discouraging," said Annie Atherton, a sophomore focusing on international studies.

His speech began telling of how he returned to his homeland of Bangladesh in 1971 after it seceded from Pakistan. Yunus told of teaching economics inside local colleges.

"People were experiencing famine on the outside of those walls," he said.

He told of time when he went around and asked 42 people who were struggling to buy food how much money they would need to settle their debts, and paid the $27 average debt to each person.

"From there on, people started looking at me as if I was some sort of angel, and I thought 'Hey, if I could be an angel for $27 dollars, why not?'" Yunus said.

Lending money to people who were not considered bankable was the key to getting these people out of poverty, he said.

Yunus attempted to pursue local banks to start catering to people who needed the money most and was shut down until they agreed to let him take out a loan to cover the people's loans. This small micro-lending system continued until 1983 when Yunus was able to open Grameen Bank.

"The less money you have, the more interested we are in you," Yunnus said of his bank's philosophy.

Since then, the bank has had 7.5 million borrowers, 97 percent of them women.

"People always ask me in interviews 'Why do you have more women clients?'" Yunnus said. "'Why do banks have more male clients?'"

People wonder how the banks survive with no legal system tying the clients to repay the loans.

"I was really surprised that the payback of loans was as high as 99 percent," Atherton said.

There are now 2,500 self-running branches of the bank today.

The bank has programs that teach entrepreneurial skills to local beggars that have been extremely successful. By simply giving these beggars a small loan and teaching them to sell something while they are begging, many beggars have turned into "door-to-door sales people," Yunnus said. "Ten thousand beggars have made the decision to stop begging."

Yunus ended his speech with a strong, encouraging message.

"In our city there is no poor person, in our state there is no poor person, in our country there is no poor person," he said. "If we put an ad in our paper for $1 million to the first person who can find a homeless person, it would go unclaimed. We will have to open a poverty museum to educate our children on what poverty was."

[Reach reporter Chantal Anderson at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]