Professor Yunus has had significant collaboration with Ashoka Fellows before and since his election as a founding member of Ashoka's Global Academy in 2001.

Professor Yunus will be directing some of his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize Award towards building eye hospitals for the poor in Bangladesh. The idea, sparked by Ashoka Fellow David Green in collaboration with his own organization, Project Impact, and eyecare partners Aravind and Seva Foundation, will develop an initial five eye hospitals in Bangladesh.

The recent collaboration is a continuation of ongoing ties between Grameen and Ashoka and its Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. Starting in November 2003, 14 Ashoka Fellows-including Francisco Javier Duque, Arturo Garcia, Juan Infante, Albina Ruiz Rios, Fabio Rosa, Pradip Sarmah, J.B. Schramm, and Mark Swilling-traveled to Bangladesh for an intensive ten day workshop and dialogue with Dr.Yunus and Grameen, visiting the bank and rural villages, learning its operations, and sharing their own work. The Grameen-Ashoka Dialogue moved beyond microcredit to explore the emerging trend of social-business ventures for poverty eradication, and to begin to create a common action and marketing agenda around business-social ventures- revenue-generating business models critical to marketing the systems change of social entrepreneurs.

Professor's Yunus's visionary ideas, inspirational story and profound impact as a social entrepreneur are the topics of three films in Ashoka's Social Entrepreneurship Series, which features him in "Banker to the Poor," "Building Social-Business Ventures," and "Creating a Poverty-Free World." Ashoka's Global Academy demonstrates and defines how social entrepreneurs can address global problems on a global scale. Its Members serve as architects of the dynamic, competitive citizen sector of the future.