As part of events for the Janadriya Festival, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus gave a lecture Saturday at the King Faisal Conference Center in Riyadh in which he spoke of his work to combat poverty. Yunus described the various ways he had employed to create job opportunities for impoverished people through loans from the bank he set up to “give them a significant boost towards changing the course of their lives”. “The important thing is to break the cycle of poverty, and that is through giving the poor the confidence in their abilities to change their way and standard of life,” Yunus said. Yunus, who is from Bangladesh, spoke of the work he had done in helping beggars. “The special program we have for beggars has managed to find gainful employment for over 100,000 persons, enabling them to give up begging and take up productive work,” the Nobel laureate said. “Everybody has creative abilities by which they can work and offer a great deal,” he said. “Unfortunately society has closed the door on those people and has not given them the right opportunities.” Yunus said that the economy needed “redesigning” so that it can serve smaller groups. “Why aren't there banking systems that open their doors to the poor, or loan programs so they can begin their lives anew?” Yunus asked. Prior to the lecture, Yunus was described in an introductory speech by the Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency Muhammad Al-Jassir as a “pioneer of small-business financing” who “developed the concept to offer unqualified owners of extremely small businesses traditional bank loans”. “Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh based on the principles of trust and solidarity and helping the poor to fight poverty through teaching sound financial principles to enable them to help themselves,” Al
