Micro financing is a concept which gained popularity globally after Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh won Nobel Peace Prize for it.

This fall, university students across the state of Oregon will form teams and compete with each other to fight the state's social and environmental problems by creating 'social businesses' based on the concept of micro credit.

Yunus himself will hand over the winning team the prize at Oct. 1 ceremony where he will also be addressing the students with his key note speech to inspire students to create such social businesses to help the economically-backward to be entrepreneurs.

The event named "Oregon Social Business Challenge" will be held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland.

According to Register-Guard, Yunus has agreed to waive his customary $125,000 speaker's fee as long as the university can find 1,000 Oregonians to attend the competition.

As part of the event, the public and private university students from across Oregon are challenged to develop creative, practical business responses to some of the state's most pressing local and regional issues using social business approaches.

The top-performing team in the competition will receive incubation support to develop their winning idea into a social business that can be implemented.

Muhammad Yunus developed the concept of microcredit and established a bank called 'Grameen Bank' (Rural Bank) which would provide small amounts of repayable money with low interest rates to the poor. This helped many women in his home country to overcome poverty and be self-sustained individuals. For this achievement of his, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The concept of microcredit is not only beneficial in third world countries where money lenders charge exorbitant interest rates, but also in countries where many potential small-time entrepreneurs are shunned away by banks on loan approval.

With economy in the U.S. hitting rock bottom, concepts such as 'social businesses' could give the economy a much needed boost.

Apart from Yunus, special guest speaker Governor John Kitzhaber will also be speaking about the economic challenges faced by the state of Oregon at the event.