German Trade Union Leader Takes Interest in Social Business

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Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus met with Mr Michael Sommer, the Chairman of the German Federation of Trade Unions on April 8 at the residence of German Ambassador Dr. Albrecht Conze. Mr Sommer and his delegation are in Bangladesh on a four day visit.

Mr Sommer discussed social business ideas with Professor Yunus and presented his experience with trade unions, which have a 150 year old history in Germany. He wanted to understand how social business can help workers and the underprivileged in new ways.

Professor Yunus explained how social business, a non-dividend selfless business can solve human problems and especially how to transform unemployment into entrepreneurship. Social Business could be used to tackle youth unemployment in contexts as diverse as Bangladesh and European countries which are going through extremely high youth unemployment. Mr Sommer went into details about social business methodology and pointed out many of these ideas have similarity in initiatives taken in the past in Germany for exactly the same reasons. He invited Professor Yunus to present his ideas to the Convention of German Trade Unions in December 2014 in Germany. Professor Yunus accepted the invitation.