UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon speaks while Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus looks on at the MDG Innovation Forum in New York at United Nations Secretariat Building on Tuesday.
Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus took part in a number of high-profile meetings in New York to help advance the millennium development goals and social business idea.
On Tuesday, the micro-credit pioneer took part in a discussion with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon at the MDG Inno-vation Forum in New York at the United Nations Secretariat building.
The UN secretary general invited leaders from the private and public sectors and demonstrated ways to accelerate progress on the MDGs, Yunus Centre said in a statement yesterday.
The forum showcased four high-impact projects, including one presented by Yunus, which are meant to help advance traditional philanthropy in the direction of smart targeted investments and creative partnerships, with a specific goal of garnering new commitments to aid in their implementation.
Prof Yunus, Mary Joy Pigozzi on behalf of Sheikha Moza, Ray Chambers and Prof Jeffrey Sachs made presentations on high impact projects.
Presentation of Yunus, who is also the founder of Grameen Bank, focused on expanding social business globally towards achieving the MDG targets in education, healthcare and food security.
Other MDG advocates and industry leaders provided constructive feedback on the presentations, which helped them interact with the speakers and explore new ideas of collaboration.
Yunus also participated in the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) at a special session styled ‘Advancing Progress: Investing in Healthy and Educated Girls and Women’.
Yunus, Queen Rania of Jordan, Hillary Rodham Clinton, former US Secretary of State, Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, took part in the session, which highlighted specific approaches to enable girls and women worldwide to learn, earn, thrive, and control their own destinies.
The banker to the poor spoke about social business and highlighted experiences from the Grameen Nursing College in transforming the lives of girls in Bangladesh.
As a commissioner of the Broadband Commission, he also attended the group’s 6th annual meeting on Friday.
On the sidelines of the meeting, he attended a deal signing ceremony between Grameen Intel Social Business in Bangladesh with the Macedonia government to take technology solutions for agriculture communities in Macedonia.
Yunus participated as keynote speaker at the UN Global Compact Summit 2013 on September 19-20 at the Grand Hyatt in New York.
Chaired by Ban Ki-moon, the summit brought together chief executives with leaders from civil society, governments and the UN to unveil a new global architecture for corporate sustainability.
Yunus delivered a key note speech on “How can corporations create social businesses to address pressing social problems” at the inaugural dinner.
Source: The Daily Star
