{"id":732,"date":"2012-07-29T03:52:20","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T09:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/?p=732"},"modified":"2012-07-27T23:53:27","modified_gmt":"2012-07-28T05:53:27","slug":"disaster-hit-japan-could-use-microfinance-yunus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/29\/disaster-hit-japan-could-use-microfinance-yunus\/","title":{"rendered":"Disaster-hit Japan could use microfinance: Yunus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.japantoday.com\/images\/size\/200x\/2012\/07\/photo_1343288523356-1-0.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus said Thursday that microfinance could help disaster-struck Japan rebuild, even though the concept he pioneered is usually associated with poor and developing nations.<\/p>\n<p>Yunus, seen as one of the world\u2019s leading anti-poverty activists, said extending small loans could help people in regions devastated by last year\u2019s quake-tsunami disaster, despite Japan being one of Asia\u2019s richest countries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s needed everywhere\u2014it doesn\u2019t matter where you are,\u201d the Bangladeshi Nobel laureate told the Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club of Japan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you come to a disaster area like Tohoku (in northeast Japan), it\u2019s all the more important\u2026 You have to rebuild everything all over again. There\u2019s no house, there\u2019s nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About 19,000 people died or remain missing after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off Japan\u2019s northeastern coast triggered a giant tsunami on March 11 last year.<\/p>\n<p>Many had to evacuate communities near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, leaving thousands without jobs or homes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou used to have a job. Now you have no job because of the disaster. Can I create my own job? Self-employment,\u201d Yunus said, citing the benefits of small microfinance loans.<\/p>\n<p>Yunus was the founder of Grameen Bank, which has been credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty by offering rural families loans to start small business ventures.<\/p>\n<p>But last year he was sacked as head of the bank, apparently on the orders of the Bangladeshi government, sparking widespread international anger. <\/p>\n<p>Photo by AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus said Thursday that microfinance could help disaster-struck Japan rebuild, even though the concept he pioneered is usually associated with poor and developing nations. Yunus, seen as one of the world\u2019s leading anti-poverty activists, said extending small loans could help people in regions devastated by last year\u2019s quake-tsunami disaster, despite Japan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}