A new lending system designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs in low-income communities will be introduced to Scotland at the start of next year.
The Grameen Scotland Foundation will identify business hopefuls "locked out" of the financial system who would benefit from loans charged at competitive rates of interest.
Borrowers are not required to provide collateral up front and are asked instead to show evidence of a saving pattern.
The pilot scheme will serve Glasgow, North Ayrshire, West Dunbartonshire and Inverclyde, four of the five most deprived communities in Scotland.
Tesco Bank will provide £500,000 for Grameen's first venture in Europe. The model currently operates in 38 other countries.
The foundation has also attracted £100,000 from the Scottish Government and the same donation by Stagecoach founder and philanthropist Ann Gloag.
The Grameen system of lending was devised in Bangladesh in the 1980s by Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, the new chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University.
He said: "We must encourage people to envision their own futures and once that is done find out how to get there – once a person has a vision, it can be made real."
The Grameen method sprung from an experiment when Professor Yunus, then a lecturer, gave 27 US dollars to 42 workers who were in debt to loan sharks.
The loans saved the workers from punitive interest repayments, which in turn allowed them to support their families. The borrowers repaid the loans in full.
Mr Yunus and the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for anti-poverty work.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article