Grameen Foundation, founded as Grameen Foundation USA, also known as "GFUSA", is a global

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based in

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, that uses digital technology and data to understand very poor people, in detail, and offer them—and the entire ecosystem of agencies and actors surrounding them—empowering tools that meet and elevate their everyday realities. Its CEO is Zubaida Bai. Grameen Foundation's mission is, "To enable the poor, especially women, to create a world without poverty and hunger." According to the

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, Grameen Foundation’s financing for 2019 development increased by 33% to US$45.5 million. It is separate from organizations called "Grameen Foundation" in different countries, such as Grameen Foundation Australia.

History

The Grameen Foundation was founded by author and independent consultant to nonprofit organizations Alex Counts in 1997. He established the foundation with $6,000 in seed funding from

Muhammad Yunus Muhammad Yunus (born 28 June 1940) is a Bangladeshi economist, entrepreneur, and civil society leader who has been serving as the Chief Adviser of Bangladesh, Chief Adviser of the Interim government of Muhammad Yunus, interim Yunus ministry, g ...

. The mission was to facilitate the expansion of banks modeled after the Grameen Bank beyond the borders of

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

and increase the access of poor people to microfinance by millions worldwide. After 18 years, he resigned from his position as president and CEO in 2015. He was replaced by former executive vice president for global programs David Edelstein. ''Grameen'' (গ্রামীণ) is a Bengali word meaning "rural" or "village." Nobel-prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus is founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, sat on the Board of Directors for 12 years and is now a director emeritus. Immediate past chairs of the board are Paul Maritz, formerly CEO of VMWare and formerly a senior executive at

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, and Robert Eichfeld, a retired executive at Citibank. The current chair of the board is Peter Cowhey, the UC San Diego Interim Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Communications and Technology Policy, and the dean of the School of Global Policy and Strategy.

Programs

Grameen Foundation leverages their expertise in digital technology and data to understand very poor people, especially women and girls, and offer them—and the entire ecosystem of agencies and actors surrounding them—tools that allow them to show up with their full power to end poverty and hunger. Working with local and global allies, Grameen Foundation also develops and distributes mobile phone-based applications to help the poor to better manage: * Their health, through such programs as the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) initiative in Ghana * Their crops, through such programs as the Community Knowledge Worker initiative in Uganda * Their finances, though such programs as the Mobile Money initiative in Uganda Grameen Foundation forayed into open source core banking systems by launching the website mifosx. The Mifos project was formally launched by Grameen Foundation in 2006.

References

External links

''Highway Africa News Agency'', November 25, 2005. {{Authority control Foundations based in Washington, D.C. Microfinance in North America Non-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C. Organizations established in 1997 International non-profit organizations

History

Programs

References

Further reading

External links