Yunus Visit Follow-up

You hear people speak of tipping points, in societies, movements, or organizations….it felt like we hit ours last week. Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus came to Vancouver and we somehow found ourselves very intricately involved in the visit! For any that don’t know, this man is an icon in the microcredit world, and has dedicated his adult life to innovative solutions to global poverty and as an advocate for the world’s poor.
Our Agents created and presented all of the questions for a morning colloquium on corporate social responsibility, joining the public conversation with Dr. Yunus and other distinguished guests from the BC community (Patrice Pratt, Chair Vancity Board, Shawn Atleo, BC Regional Chief, Prof James Tansey, UBC Bus. Ethics Chair). We were also honoured tojoin the private President’s luncheon after the session, enjoying personal time to engage Dr. Yunus and the other guests in more private conversation about his work, and sharing much of what we are trying to do locally. The experience of a lifetime for everyone in attendance; you could cut the inspiration with a knife in that room! That night, our team arrived en masse, with over 50 agents meeting for drinks before decending on the Chan Centre in green “I’m an Agent” tshirts for the evening talk – we were hard not to notice and made a ton of great contacts.
As bookends to these experiences, we helped Yunus’ team with media, and were invited to present Dr. Yunus with a plaque recognizing him as a “Global Agents for Change” on behalf of young people everywhere. This involved meeting him in a much smaller private ceremony with the local Bangladeshi community and making a short speech, before the plaque ceremony and photos. For media we joined Yunus and his team for coffee Saturday morning and helped set-up and coordinate newspaper interviews with the Vancouver Sun and Globe and Mail, before seeing him off to a CBC television interview on his way the airport.

Just a completely surreal weekend…but it truly feels like we matured an entire level as an organization. We’re poised for some incredible things, and with a jolt of inspiration from Yunus himself we feel pretty unstoppable.