Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank
recieves the nobel peace price.
The fact that a peace price is given to a development project says something about how the world is more and mores percieved to be interlinked, how fighting poverty and empowering the individual through the possibility of making their own future is linked to the fight for peace.
I once visited some of the micro-projects in Togo and Benin and saw the impact they had especially on women. The way they talked and walked with more pride. They had espablished small cliniques and small businesses and they no longer felt left at the power of the man, or the wims of an unstable government. The interesting thing was that empowering the women also had the positive unintended consequence that the HIV rate tropped. By empowering women they were enable to say no to sex with more men if they did not want to, and they stood up to their husbounds cheating on them. And they actually started using birthcontrol. This is good work! very good work!
(these are the only pictures i have from Togo digitally - in 2003 i had all my pictures in print - i will definitly scan them in someday!)
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