After a long period of preparations, Grameen University is finally ready to begin its journey. I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked with dedication, patience and commitment to bring us to this opening stage. Many scholars, experts, colleagues and members of the wider Grameen family have contributed their time, ideas and energy. This university is the result of their collective effort, and I thank each one of them.

Grameen University will deal with two sets of questions. What kind of world do we live in now? How did we get here? What kind of world do we wish to create? How do we get there?

Grameen University (GrameenU) will function at two levels. At the first level, it will focus on the academic standards followed worldwide offering formal degrees attesting to the excellence in the state-of-the-art knowledge, skill and creativity and efforts in adding to them, as expected from a top-class university.  

At the second level, GrameenU will offer an informal, optional dimension of learning. This is what will make Grameen University exceptional. These programmes will not be required for obtaining a degree; but although optional, we will highly recommend them, actively promote them and encourage every student to participate. I hope it will become the most memorable part of the Grameen University experience: a personal journey that will help students discover what they truly wish to do with their lives. A worldview formed here, going deep into humanity, will be no less valuable than the degree obtained from here. It will be valuable now, while a student is going through the most memorable period of his/her life; it will be valuable for gleaning further knowledge and experience after leaving the university; and it will remain valuable for the rest of life of the student.   

This is where we will introduce students to the ideas and possibilities at the core of Grameen University: creating the world of Three Zeros, 3Zero Clubs, environmental responsibility, social business, entrepreneurship, technology, creativity and the enormous potential of every human being. We gave our university a name with two parts, Grameen University, dedicated to creating a world of three zeros. It is a university with a defined mission, and that mission is built into its very name.  

We believe students must understand why they are here and what we are trying to offer them, over and above academic excellence. We will help them understand the world today and ask what kind of world they wish to create.  

Even a simple wish list will do. We want every student to go through this exercise. They will do it voluntarily. They will be encouraged to explore, along with their teachers and peers, with joy and with a mission. We will ask each student to make personal commitments: what kind of person do you want to become? What will you do yourself to help create that world? We will encourage students to keep this wish-list with them for the rest of their lives.

We will encourage students to become part of an international community of young people who are not waiting for the world to give them opportunities, but are engaged in creating opportunities for themselves and for others.

Grameen University’s vision is rooted in a simple belief that every human being has enormous creative capacity. Too often, we judge young people’s potential by the lens of the existing system, and too many begin their university education asking the wrong questions: What job can I get? Which company will employ me? What salary can I earn? They prepare themselves to meet the needs of a company, not their own needs. We want Grameen University to help change that mindset. The questions should be: what is needed to set things right, and how I can contribute in it.  

We will encourage young people to imagine planet Earth as a spaceship, rushing forward through space at a mind-boggling speed, carrying all of us onboard. We also want them to imagine what are we doing inside this spaceship? Are we merely passengers on this spaceship, busy making ourselves comfortable for the long journey ahead, searching for better seats, looking for an upgrade to business class or first class, making sure we get priority service easily? In the real world, this looks very close description of what we actually do. Nobody is telling us that we have chosen the wrong role for ourselves.

Our true role should have been different. We are meant to be the pilots and the crew of experts who steer this spaceship, guiding it toward the most desired destination while protecting everyone aboard from the dangers along the way. This brings us to the role of universities. Universities exist to continuously produce the best pilots and crew, so that they can bring us to our desired destination safely and quickly. The fate of humankind depends on their quality.

A human being is born with all the potentials of an entrepreneur. Every human being is born with enormous creative capacity, the ability to imagine something that does not yet exist. His mission is to try to bring it into existence. We should not allow education to reduce this capacity to the search for a job. Education should not prepare young people only to become job seekers. It should prepare them to become job creators, social framework creators, problem solvers and builders of new and better versions of society. We will emphasize the importance of imagination because imagination is the starting point of every human achievement. A student who feels the weight of poverty should be able to imagine a world without it. A student who sees unemployment as degrading to human dignity should be able to imagine a world of meaningful economic opportunity for everyone.

At Grameen University, we will encourage students not merely to think about entrepreneurship, but to prepare themselves for it. We want to give them the knowledge, confidence, technology, networks and practical experience necessary to establish themselves as entrepreneurs. Ideally, some students should be able to establish their own enterprises before they even leave the university.

Students must learn to turn their imagination into action. This is where entrepreneurship becomes important, not simply as starting a company and making money, but as recognising a problem, taking responsibility for it, and building a solution that can sustain itself and reach the people who need it. This is where the power of social business begins. We will encourage them to create mini-social businesses to solve the problems of the world. A social business uses the power of enterprise, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship to address human and environmental problems. It is financially sustainable, but its purpose is radically different than maximizing profit of the entrepreneurs; its purpose is to solve problems and create benefit for people and the planet without owners taking any profit out of it. Why people will choose social business over profit maximizing business? For a very simple and transparent reason—“Making money is happiness, but making other people happy is super happiness”.  

Technology now gives us possibilities that were unimaginable to previous generations. A young person sitting in one isolated corner of the world can communicate, collaborate, create and build something with people thousands of miles away. A small idea can travel across the world almost instantly, and a young entrepreneur can build an international movement without waiting for a large institution to give permission. We want to use this power of technology to create a global movement of youth entrepreneurship. Imagine millions of young people in different countries connected with one another, sharing ideas, solving problems, creating social businesses and helping one another, a global community of young people determined to create their own world.

Young people today have access to massive technological power that no previous generation ever possessed. Each generation is becoming more powerful than the generation before it, because technology is placing more knowledge, tools and possibilities in their hands. Compared with the generation of their grandparents, young people today can already be described as “super human beings” because of the knowledge and technology available to them. The next generation will become even more powerful. Things that were impossible for earlier generations will become easy for the present generation. The question is whether you are aware of it, and whether you will use this power. Your attention can make things happen. Your imagination can make things happen. Your ability to connect with others can make things happen. Technology can turn a small idea into a global upsurge.  

This forces us to rethink what it means to be human. A human being is definitely not born simply to become an employee, spending the entire life taking orders from the supervisors. He/she is born with imagination, creativity, energy, courage and the capacity to make choices he/she is packed with unlimited creative capacity. Every young person is a unique creation in the entire history of humanity, with an opportunity that no previous generation ever had. If these unique gifts are not used, they will be lost forever. We should not educate young people merely to fit themselves into the world as it exists. Their dream should be to create the world they imagine; and universities should prepare them to expand their horizon of creativity continuously.

This brings us to the Three Zeros: Zero Net Carbon Emissions, Zero Wealth Concentration for ending poverty and Zero Unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in all. This is not a mere empty wish list, this is a way of imagining a whole new civilisation, one where poverty is not accepted as inevitable, unemployment does not go with human beings, economic progress does not destroy the planet, and wealth and opportunity are not concentrated in the hands of a few.

This sounds like a gigantic task. And yes, it is. But it has a bite-size version too. Always remember, a million-mile journey starts with a single step. Don’t worry about creating the whole new civilisation at once. We can take small steps. First step is— just turn yourself into a Three Zero person, making a personal commitment to achieving each zero. If we all take these small steps, the result can become enormous. If each one of us becomes a Three Zero person, the world becomes a Three Zero world.

This is how the 3Zero Club becomes important. Each tiny club can become a community within the university where students learn together, make commitments, experiment with ideas and take action, while connecting with young people around the world who share the same dreams.

We want students to ask themselves: what problem can I solve? Whose life can I improve? What can I create? How can I use technology to make my idea reach millions of people? Solving a global problem can always begin with one person. If you can solve one person’s problem, you have got the key to the solution of the global problem. Then you can improve it, repeat it and expand it. Technology can help you take the solution from one person to thousands, and from thousands to millions. A thin footpath can become a superhighway. The university provides the best environment to put the first foot-print of the future footpath.  

When we talk about young people we are talking about young men and young women. Leave behind the old world ideas of girls stay home, boys go out and get things done. Today both girls and boys are equal “super human beings”. In your university life you establish it clearly and firmly so the outside world cannot remain the extension of the old world. Creativity is a genderless quality in human beings. World will always need to harvest all the creativity to make desired changes take place fast.  

The greatest ideas a student pursues through life may not come from the classroom alone; they may come from the Three Zero ecosystem of the university, that you will build, half done experiments that you will leave behind in the neighborhood of the university, by successive classes of students who were here before you.  

University is a factory of producing theories—some are good theories, some are reasonable theories, some are outright wrong theories. Wrong theories create wrong world. The challenges before humanity, climate change, poverty, unemployment, inequality, displacement and the rapid transformation are brought by poor theories. Problems created by theories cannot be solved by governments or businesses. The world will continue to need new theories, new ideas, new institutions, and a new generation ready to take up this responsibility to get closer and closer to the right theories, right policies, right institutions. Your responsibility will be to shoot down the wrong theories, create the right theories, add the power to the good theories.

Welcome to Grameen University.

I can assure you—you will have lot of fun changing the world.

I wish you a wonderful, memorable, and creative time at Grameen University. You have willingly signed up to change the world by coming to Grameen University. I fully trust that you can do it.  

Go ahead and create a world of three zeros.  

Wishing you all an exciting journey ahead. Good luck!

Professor Muhammad Yunus  

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate  

Founder, Grameen University