UNH Today

The University of New Hampshire will welcome Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate and pioneer of the microfinance industry, to campus Monday, Sept. 30, 2013, as the keynote speaker for the statewide New Hampshire Social Business and Microfinance Forum and the Social Business Innovation Challenge for New Hampshire college students and community members.

The final round of the Social Business Innovation Challenge begins at 8 a.m. in Piscataqua and Squamscott rooms, UNH Holloway Commons. The presentation of Social Business Innovation awards and keynote address “Social Business – The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs” by Nobel Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus begins at 10 a.m. in the Granite State Room, MUB.

The events are being hosted by UNH and organized by the Paul College of Business and Economics and the Carsey Institute, both at UNH. They are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Please register at http://www.unh.edu/socialbusiness/agenda-and-registration. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yunus will give the keynote address at the New Hampshire Social Business and Microfinance Forum, and will present the awards at the Social Business Innovation Challenge. Only the seventh person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (2006), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009), and the Congressional Gold Medal (2013), Yunus is best known for his pioneering work as the founder of the Grameen Bank, as the “father of microcredit,” and more broadly for the movement to create social businesses.

Social businesses create innovative solutions to difficult problems such as poverty and climate change. Unlike traditional nonprofit organizations, social businesses aim to be market-based and to fund their operations and growth through earned revenues rather than donations. Like for-profits, social businesses harness the best of market-based approaches, but have a primary social, rather than financial, objective. Social business provides a necessary framework for tackling social issues by combining business know-how with the desire to improve quality of life.

The first Social Business Innovation Challenge asks college students from across the state to find innovative, business-oriented solutions to pressing social and environmental issues at the state, national or global level.

For more information, visit http://www.unh.edu/socialbusiness. The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students.