The Yunus Foundation preserves the precious legacy of Grameen Foundation – Italy, in the field of Microcredit and enriches its vision by looking at the world of Social Business as a possible reinterpretation of the goals and methods of business activities, which aim to generate value for the Community, even before private profits.

Our Story

The Grameen Italia Foundation was founded in 2010 from the collaboration between the Bologna University, Unicredit Foundation and the Grameen Trust, thanks to the will of the Nobel Peace Prize Muhammad Yunus to create a center in Europe capable of promoting microcredit and social business based on the model of Grameen Bank. The foundation was recognized by the Supervisory Authority in the same year and began conducting research and strategic evaluation activities under the guidance of the vice-presidency of Prof. Luisa Brunori of the University of Bologna. The creation of the Foundation as a specialized center on the Grameen methodology has had continuity with numerous initiatives implemented since 2006, including the University Strategic Project M.I.C.R.O, and the International Observatory on Microfinance (M.I.O), international center of excellence for research and analysis of the microcredit phenomenon in the world.

From 2010 to 2016, the Foundation mainly concentrated on research activity, organizing international conferences, awareness-raising events and training courses on the topic of microcredit and social business.
Since 2017, Grameen Italia has been accredited at the National Organization for Microcredit to offer accompanying services to microcredit, i.e. the so-called “auxiliary non-financial assistance and monitoring services for microcredit” required by Italian legislation. The Foundation also offers business development services to individuals and organizations that do not plan to use microcredit to develop their business.

In pursuit of its mission, Grameen Foundation – Italy has also worked in the sectors of financial education and social planning, collaborating with civil society organizations in the implementation of educational interventions and employment support. Furthermore, to respond to the new needs of non-financial social reporting, some of which made more urgent by the ETS Reform of 2016, Grameen Italia carries out studies for the evaluation of the social impact.
In 2019, Grameen Foundation – Italy faced a phase of transformation of its organizational identity, taking the name of “Fondazione Yunus Italia”. The transition was strongly desired to make themselves immediately recognizable to the identity of the founder, theNobel Peace Prize Muhammad Yunus, and above all to underline the attention placed not only on microcredit, but also on other tools and philosophies of economic, social and environmental intervention which are based on the principles of Three Zeros metric and Social Business.