Highlights of 2008 - Conference with Yunus

One of the highlights of my year was getting to attend the Social Business and Microeconomic Opportunities for Youth Conference in Denver in March. It was great for so many reasons. I got to go on a short trip without my kids, fly and hang with two of my good friends, stay in my Dad's hotel, see my brother Matt from Chicago, be there for my Dad's 50th birthday celebration and of course, the conference was awesome. The keynote speaker was Muhammed Yunus who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in creating micro loans for the poor. He started in Bangladesh, where he is from, over 25 years ago and it has now become a worldwide movement with thousands of organizations providing microcredit and microbusiness training to the poorest of the poor (mostly people living on less than a dollar or two a day). I am so glad that he won this award, although he has revolutionized international development, he is such a humble and kind person - he deserves every bit of recognition! I enjoyed hearing him speak and the many others at the conference that really inspired me to continue on my path of finding ways to contribute to alleviating poverty around the world. (And yes, I was very pregnant in these pictures, ugh.)

I was privileged to get to have breakfast with Yunus one morning (me and 300 others). :)

Yunus, Me, and my friends, Jen Boehme Kumar and Genevieve Brown