RESULTS.org > Take Action > Global Monthly Action Archive > July 2009: Ask Your Members of Congress to Cosponsor the Muhammad Yunus Gold Medal Act of 2009

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July 2009: Ask Your Members of Congress to Cosponsor the Muhammad Yunus Gold Medal Act of 2009

Microcredit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions. Economic growth and political democracy cannot achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male.

— Norwegian Nobel Committee (2006)

Since the American Revolution, Congress has commissioned gold medals as its highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions. Although the first recipients included citizens who participated in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, Congress broadened the scope of the medal to include actors, authors, entertainers, musicians, pioneers in aeronautics and space, explorers, lifesavers, notables in science and medicine, athletes, humanitarians, public servants, and foreign recipients.

As the recognized “father of microfinance,” Muhammad Yunus is esteemed in the United States and abroad as an innovative and tireless leader in the fight against poverty. For more than 30 years, his efforts to advance economic development and social change through microenterprise have been emulated by others and provided the tools for millions of desperately poor people to lift their families out of poverty.

Write letters to your representative and senators urging them cosponsor H.R.2000 (House) and S.846 (Senate), the bills to award Muhammad Yunus the Congressional Gold Medal. Also ask them to urge other members of Congress to cosponsor. In order to receive this award, the bill must have two-thirds cosponsorship in the House and Senate.

Take Action! Write a Letter to Your Representative and Senators

  1. Introduce yourself as a RESULTS volunteer and a constituent. Acknowledge any actions that your member has already taken to support our work or other actions on poverty and thank him/her.
  2. Urge your representative to cosponsor H.R. 2000, the bill the bill to award Muhammad Yunus the Congressional Gold Medal. Also ask them to urge other representatives to cosponsor.
  3. Sample Letter:

    Dear Representative/Senator ____________:

    Prof. Yunus was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 because his work not only used financial services in a creative way to reach the poor, but also because his efforts have contributed to creating a more peaceful world. Prof. Yunus has taught the world that although microfinance is not a panacea, it is a proven tool to help the poor lift their families out of poverty. Few others have had as important an impact on poverty reduction around the globe.

    Presenting Prof. Yunus with the Congressional Gold Medal would send a clear message that the U.S. is committed to fulfilling our goals of reducing extreme poverty around the world.

    [For representatives: I think you would agree that if 302 representatives cosponsored H.R.1243, the bill to award the Gold Medal to Arnold Palmer (the golfer), than Muhammad Yunus should also receive similar support for transforming the lives of millions of the very poor.]

    Will you please cosponsor H.R.2000/S.846 and encourage at least three or more of your colleagues to do the same? In order to receive this award, the bill must have two-thirds cosponsorship in the House and Senate.

    To cosponsor H.R.2000, which was introduced by Reps. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Jim Moran (D-VA), John R. Carter (R-TX), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), please contact Will O’Neal with Rep. Holt (D-NJ) at (202) 225-5801.

    To cosponsor S.846, introduced by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Robert Bennett (R-UT), please contact Drew Simon with Sen. Durbin (D-IL) at (202) 224-2152

  4. Request a reply and include all of your contact information. Please e-mail and fax your letter if possible. Call and make sure the aide that handles these issues received your letter. For contact information, go to www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.

Honoring Prof. Muhammad Yunus with the Congressional Gold Medal

Founder of Grameen Bank: Prof. Yunus launched the origins of Grameen Bank in 1976 with $27 from his pocket to provide business loans for 42 poor women in his native Bangladesh. This credit — given without collateral — has proven to be an incredibly cost-effective tool to fight poverty and serves as a catalyst for overall development for the poor who have been excluded from traditional banking services. Established in 1983, Grameen Bank is fully owned by its clients and has been a model for microfinance institutions around the world. Prof. Yunus played a key role in catapulting a movement to provide financial services on a global scale. Grameen has since expanded to serve more than six million poor families with loans, savings, insurance and other services and has partnered with corporations, such as Danone/Dannon.

Nobel Peace Prize: In 2006, Prof. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Prof. Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank. The Committee noted, “Microcredit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions. Economic growth and political democracy cannot achieve their full potential unless the female half of humanity participates on an equal footing with the male.”

Awards: Professor Yunus is the recipient of numerous international awards for his ideas and endeavors, including the Mohamed Shabdeen Award for Science (1993), Sri Lanka; Humanitarian Award (1993), CARE, USA; World Food Prize (1994), World Food Prize Foundation, USA; Independence Day Award (1987), Bangladesh’s highest award; King Hussein Humanitarian Leadership Award (2000), King Hussein Foundation, Jordan; Volvo Environment Prize (2003), Volvo Environment Prize Foundation, Sweden; Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth (2004), Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan; Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom Award (2006), Roosevelt Institute of The Netherlands; and the Seoul Peace Prize (2006), Seoul Peace Prize Cultural Foundation, Seoul, Korea. He is a member of the board of the United Nations Foundation.

Impact of Awarding Prof. Yunus the Congressional Gold Medal

Presenting Prof. Yunus with the Congressional Gold Medal would help to:

  1. Raise public and congressional awareness of the power of microfinance to change lives;
  2. Build congressional and U.S. government support for this proven anti-poverty intervention;
  3. Send a strong signal to USAID and the World Bank that the U.S. is committed to microfinance for the very poor;
  4. Reinforce the message that microfinance is strongly supported by both political parties.

Biography of Professor Muhammad Yunus[1]

Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fueled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves. From Prof. Yunus’ personal loan of small amounts of money to destitute basket-weavers in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model operate in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Born in 1940 in the seaport city of Chittagong, Professor Yunus studied at Dhaka University in Bangladesh, then received a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at Vanderbilt University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt in 1969 and the following year became an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University. Returning to Bangladesh, Yunus headed the economics department at Chittagong University. From 1993 to 1995, Professor Yunus was a member of the International Advisory Group for the Fourth World Conference on Women, a post to which he was appointed by the UN secretary-general. He has served on the Global Commission of Women’s Health, the Advisory Council for Sustainable Economic Development and the UN Expert Group on Women and Finance. Prof. Yunus is the author of Creating a World Without Poverty and Banker to the Poor.

House Cosponsors of H.R.2000 (as of July 13, 2009): 54 cosponsors

Andrews, Robert E (D-NJ)

Baldwin, Tammy (D-WI)

Blumenauer, Earl (D-OR)

Bordallo, Madeline Z. (GU)

Brady, Robert (D-PA)

Capuano, Michael E. (D-MA)

Carson, Andre (D-IN)

Carter, John R. (R-TX)

Connolly, Gerald (D-VA)

Crowley, Joseph (D-NY)

Cummings, Elijah E. (D-MD)

Doggett, Lloyd (D-TX)

Ellison, Keith (D-MN)

Farr, Sam (D-CA)

Foster, Bill (D-IL)

Giffords, Gabrielle (D-AZ)

Green, Gene (D-TX)

Grijalva, Raul (D-AZ)

Honda, Mike (D-CA)

Jackson-Lee, Sheila (D-TX)

Johnson, Eddie Bernice (D-TX

Kirk, Mark (R-IL)

Lee, Barbara (D-CA)

Lofgren, Zoe (D-CA)

Lipinski, Daniel (D-IL)

Maloney, Carolyn B. (D-NY)

McCollum, Betty (D-MN)

McDermott, Jim (D-WA)

McNerney, Gerald (D-CA)

Michaud, Michael H. (D-ME)

Mitchell, Harry E. (D-AZ)

Moran, James P. (D-VA)

Myrick, Sue Wilkins (R-NC)

Pallone, Frank (D-NJ)

Pomeroy, Earl (D-NPL-ND)

Price, David (D-NC)

Quigley, Mike (D-IL)

Reichert, David G. (R-WA)

Rohrabacher, Dana (R-CA)

Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (R- FL)

Rothman, Steven R. (D-NJ)

Roybal-Allard, Lucille (D-CA)

Royce, Edward R. (R-CA)

Ryan, Tim (D-OH)

Schakowsky, Janice (D-IL)

Schock, Aaron (R-IL)

Smith, Adam (D-WA)

Smith, Lamar (R-TX)

Stupak, Brad (D-MI)

Tauscher, Ellen O. (D-CA)

Thornberry, Mac (R-TX)

Tierney, John (D-MA)

Watson, Diane E. (D-CA)

Wolf, Frank (R-VA)


Senate Cosponsors of S.846 (as of July 13, 2009): 60 cosponsors

Akaka, Daniel (D-HI)

Baucus, Max (D-MT)

Bayh, Evan (D-IN)

Begich, Mark (R-AK)

Bennett, Robert F. (R-UT)

Bingaman, Jeff (D-NM)

Brown, Sherrod (D-OH)

Brownback, Sam (R-KS)

Boxer, Barbara (D-CA)

Burris, Roland (D-IL)

Byrd, Robert (D-WV)

Cantwell, Maria (D-WA)

Cardin, Ben (D-MD)

Carper, Thomas (D-DE)

Casey, Robert (D-PA)

Cochran, Thad (R-MS)

Conrad, Kent (D- ND)

Collins, Susan M. (R-ME)

Dodd, Christopher (D-CT)

Enzi, Michael B. (R-WY)

Feingold, Russell D. (D-WI)

Feinstein, Diane (D-CA)

Gillibrand, Kristen (D-NY)

Hagan, Kay (D-NC)

Harkin, Tom (D-IA)

Hatch, Orrin (R-UT)

Inouye, Daniel (D-HI)

Johnson, Tim (D-SD)

Kennedy, Edward (D-MA)

Kerry, John F. (D-MA)

Klobuchar, Amy (D-MN)

Kohl, Herb (D-WI)

Landrieu, Mary L (D-LA)

Lautenberg, Frank (D-NJ)

Leahy, Patrick (D-VT)

Levin, Carl (D-MI)

Lieberman, Joseph (I-CT)

McCain, John (R-AZ)

Menendez, Robert (D-NJ)

Merkley, Jeff (D-OR)

Mikulski, Barbara (D-MD)

Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)

Murray, Patty (D-WA)

Nelson, Bill (D-FL)

Nelson, E. Benjamin (D-NE)

Pryor, Mark (D-AR)

Reed, Jack (D-RI)

Roberts, Pat (R-KS)

Sanders, Bernie (I-VT)

Schumer, Charles (D-NY)

Snowe, Olympia (R-ME)

Specter, Arlan (D-PA)

Tester, Jon (D-MT)

Udall, Mark (D-CO)

Udall, Tom (D-NM)

Voinovich, George (R-OH)

Webb, Jim (D-VA)

Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-RI)

Wicker, Roger (R-MS)

Wyden, Ron (D-OR)

 

[1] From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2006, Editor Karl Grandin, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 2007