Pierre Omidyar Quotes

My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I've given.

Microfinance does not require previous experience or loans to the same extent as a small-business loan, so it's easier for women to enter the micro sector.

What attracted me towards microfinance is it's a very sustainable business, which has an impact on people's lives yet it can be very profitable.

The moment you say microfinance everybody wants to help you.

Because microfinance is so manageable in terms of the size of the loan, people have made it the cornerstone to lifting women out of poverty.

Long live Grameen Bank. Let the power of poor women prevail.

I founded Grameen Bank to provide loans to those considered traditionally unbankable. Grameen Bank works with the poorest and often illiterate, providing uncollateralized micro-loans for tiny business enterprises by which they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation - microfinance - involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

Microcredit has shown how you can reach out to people that conventional banking cannot. It has demonstrated that it's a doable proposition.

Those who can create wealth — and know that they can — are able to dictate their own terms.

The Microfinance segment is a challenging client servicing space and thus requires a great amount of dedication, integrity and teamwork.

The developing world is full of entrepreneurs and visionaries, who with access to education, equity and credit would play a key role in developing the economic situations in their countries.

The invention of the micro-loan was a big surprise to me. Who would have guessed loans of less than $20 made to poor people in undeveloped countries could create thriving local economies? And, even more surprisingly, that they more reliably pay off their debts than the wealthy of the world.

The world has shown that if you provide capital and expertise to an area that is starved for capital and expertise, really good things will happen.

In 1989, I started the National Association of Business Women. We incorporated microfinance and different job training for women. We did a survey, with USAID, that found women lacked training, credit and information.

Technologies, including cell phones, have the potential to help millions of poor people out of poverty by enabling access to a range of safe, affordable financial services - most importantly, savings accounts - that have long been out of reach.

If the basic structure of Grameen is changed, the worry is that the poor women who are the rightful owners of the bank will be disenfranchised.

Grameen Bank was formed as an institution owned by its borrower members, who are poor women. Through its unique decision-making process, Grameen Bank has given millions of women the means to emerge from the shadows in a male-dominated society and to make something of themselves.

Our goal is to make finance the servant, not the master, of the real economy.

Lula da Silva was my hero when he was president. I Googled him so many times. The fact that he got 20 million people out of poverty... that happened by encouraging entrepreneurship, by supporting small business.

The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank.

There are many programs specifically aimed at helping people in poverty start a business.

The one thing you learn from looking at places like Afghanistan is that the power of business to do good is enormous.

The biggest thing the money Infosys brought me is the freedom to do what I want. And what I want is to give millions more the opportunities I had.

Overall, I have formed three major organizations: the National Association of Business Women, the Young Women's Leaders Network, and the Joyce Banda Foundation. Under the foundation, we have a huge program that targets women to teach them about HIV and other diseases and to give them economic empowerment.