Senior Colombian ministers have sought Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus’ advice on what the new three-month-old government of the country can do to take forward its vision of poverty reduction and “total peace.”
Yunus is now in Colombia’s Bogota at the invitation of the World Business Forum to address a Latin American conference of business executives.
Since the recently elected President Gustavo is currently at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), he instructed selected senior ministers to have an intensive consultation meeting with Yunus under the leadership of the minister in charge of the president’s office.
Yunus has been invited to Colombia by successive governments over the last two decades, and there are many programmes inspired by his work already running in the country, including microcredit programmes, social business programmes and university-initiated academic programmes.
During his visit, University Externado de Colombia, a leading university in the country, organised a large public event and invited Yunus to address it. The university has a joint programme with Yunus Centre and set up a Yunus Social Business Centre three years ago.
Yunus programmes in Colombia were presented by Yunus Centre on the work with universities, and Yunus Environment Hub about the projects for the environment and circularity in the Amazon region of the country as well as in other parts.
This was followed by Yunus presenting his vision of a three-zero world and how that can be attained by building social business and with the involvement of the young people creating three-zero clubs.
The ministers appreciated Yunus’s vision, as well as his work on the ground and his presentation, which was followed by a long discussion with them on aspects of microcredit, social business, globalisation, the role of youth, climate change, the environment and deforestation and the culture of peace.
Source: United News of Bangladesh