Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus was invited to a Parliamentary Breakfast at the German parliament (Bundestag) on Thursday by Germany’s Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Research, Mario Brandenburg.
He moderated the hour-long discussion during the breakfast. It was attended by 10 parliament members from diverse political parties, according to a press release issued by the Yunus Centre on Saturday.
Yunus was invited to speak on the current trend in rising poverty, the impact of pandemics on the low-income people, the impact of the Ukrainian war, and the experiences of the application of the social business concept in addressing these issues.
Yunus highlighted the collapse of the global system in bringing vaccines to the people of low-income countries. He pleaded with the parliament members to support the campaign to make vaccines a common good by withdrawing intellectual property rights. He also shared his proposal to create social business pharmaceutical companies to bring vaccines and medicines to all people at affordable prices.
Parliamentary Secretary Mario Brandenburg told the participants that he has already submitted a proposal in which he called for greater governmental support for social business entrepreneurship. All MPs present acknowledged that entrepreneurially driven social business can go a long way in solving social problems.
Among the parliamentarian present were Dr. Holger Becker (SPD), MP Frank Muller-Rosentritt (FDP), MP Sandra Bubendorfer-Licht (FDP), MP Volkmar Klein (CDU), MP Dr. Christiane Schenderlein (CDU), MP Alexander Radwan (CSU) and MP Canan Bayram (Bundnis 90/Die Grunen).
Professor Yunus is visiting Berlin to attend the tenth-anniversary celebration of Yunus Social Business (YSB), a company created in Berlin ten years back to promote social businesses around the world. The company headed by Saskia Bruyesten operates in Brazil, India, Colombia, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda helping create social businesses in these countries. YSB has supported around 2070 social businesses in 5 countries with USD 18 million disbursed capital, creating employment of 1.3 million income earners and engaging at least 17.8 million customers.
Tenth-year celebration was held on June 2 attended by 150 people coming from all the countries where YSB operates, and supporters of YSB in Germany and other European countries, corporate leaders, senior executives of YSBs in all countries where it operates, and media representatives. Yunus expressed his happiness that YSB which was initiated by two German young women fresh out of university in their late 20s with no funds, has reached so many people around the globe. YSB delegates shared their achievements and plans for the next decade.
Yunus left Berlin on Friday for Trento, an Italian city, to speak at the "Trento Festival of Economics", a global economic conference on social entrepreneurship for sustainable economic development.
