What can the poorest people do to aid economic development in their own communities? A great deal, when given easy access to financial services and remittance flows, says the Director of Fonkoze, Haiti’s alternative bank for the poor. This short video tells the story of two Fonkoze clients.
A microcredit loan can make all the difference in transforming a failing small business into a flourishing one. A precarious enterprise run by a widowed mother of three in a remote, post-conflict community of Armenia has become a financially viable business, thanks to a microcredit loan provided through an IFAD-supported project. The business has also stimulated the local economy, providing small-scale dairy farmers with added income.
An IFAD-funded project in the Dir district has pioneered a new approach to rural financing that conforms to Islamic regulations. In its initial phase it has helped women set up micro-enterprises. In just nine years it has demonstrated how economic and social empowerment can transform women’s status and self-esteem.
Latin America migrants working in the United States are expected to send a record US $45 billion to their families back home in 2006, according to a recent report from the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB).
The Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured Muhammad Yunus in Oslo yesterday for his pioneering work in microfinance, presenting him with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The award was shared by the Grameen Bank, the Bangladeshi institution that Professor Yunus founded more than 30 years ago.
Most of the world's poor lack access to basic financial services that would help them manage their assets and generate income. This is especially true for the 900 million extremely poor people who live in rural areas of developing countries.
Poor women are being drawn into commercial economic activities for the first time, enabling them to take advantage of new opportunities. The microfinance revolution started among rural women in Bangladesh in the 1970s. The revolution had its roots in the recognition that poor people needed credit and, more importantly, that they could use loans productively and responsibly. It showed that we were wrong in believing that poverty and a lack of collateral meant that poor people were not creditworthy. This belief was simply our own social prejudice.
Print 
Send 
Watch this short video as featured on CNN World Report:
RSS