Have you ever dreamed up an ideal means of business for yourself but couldn’t afford to fund it and have no credit history? Grameen Bank may be the answer to getting your next or first business venture up and running. Grameen (meaning village) is a banking system created in Bangladesh by Dr. Muhammed Yunus that offers micro-lending to Americans as well as folks across the globe who are financially below poverty level.

The system is simple and straightforward a group of entrepreneurs each take out a loan to be paid back in weekly installments (plus interest). If one person defaults, all are held responsible. All that is required are entrepreneurs with a plan, who you can trust. So far Dr. Yunus and Grameen Bank have been successful in their endeavors. Newsweek reports Grameen’s payback is “98%, compared with the U.S. commercial-banking average of about 90%.” The FDIC reports “nearly 8% of the U.S. population has no access to credit, and 18% has very little. This is the population that Grameen aims to serve… they are more likely to get their money back from African-American hairdressers or Latina food-cart operators than middle-class whites with maxed-out credit cards.”

In 2006 Grameen Bank was awarded the Noble Peace Prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below” and last year Dr. Yunus received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Hopefully Dr. Yunus’s efforts will not only help large population groups break out of poverty but re-instate the integrity behind the word credit (meaning “to believe in”; “entrust”) so bodegas in every hood can take down their signs.