On the second floor of a run-down building in Queens, squeezed between a sari boutique and a tiny store selling Bollywood DVDs, are two rooms – rented for $1,500 a month – whose occupants have been sent from Bangladesh to end poverty in the US.

These are the offices of the first US outpost of the Grameen Bank, an organisation set up by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel peace prize winner, and credited with turning the Bangladeshi bank into a revolutionary weapon against global poverty.