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About the 100 Million Project

The global financial inclusion movement, supported by the G20, the World 
Bank and others, seeks to ensure that all people in the world have access to
the financial services they need to manage their cash flows, buffer themselves against
financial shocks and take advantage of opportunities.  The Global Findex study found that
more than half of the people in the world do not currently have formal financial accounts, and that
the poor, women, people living in rural areas and those with limited education are among those
most likely to be excluded from financial services.

The Microcredit Summit Campaign has developed the 100 Million Project to galvanize energy around a 
global goal of reaching those living in severe poverty and providing them with useful financial tools and
services for their journey out of poverty.  This project will help the microfinance industry achieve the second
of two goals it set at the 2006 Halifax Microcredit Summit: helping 100 million families lift themselves out of
severe poverty. 

Aims of the Project

Two main avenues are being pursued toward Goal 2:

  1. Poverty Measurement: In order to measure the number of microfinance clients who have moved out of severe poverty, the Campaign is promoting broader use of reliable and accurate poverty measurement tools. With better poverty measurement tools, practitioners can more clearly identify their level of poverty down-reach and better target their services to intended client groups.
  2. Capacity Building: What are the business models, relationships and practices that most effectively facilitate client movement out of poverty? And how can organizations implement these strategies? To answer these questions, the Campaign is facilitating and supporting industry-wide learning and adoption of best practices.

 

History of the Project

The 100 Million Project is the second phase of a program the Campaign initiated in 2006.  At that time poverty measurement was an increasingly important topic of discussion among practitioners and other stakeholders.  The Campaign’s second goal, in alignment with the Millennium Development Goal to cut $1/day poverty in half by 2015*, is an ambitious undertaking and one which requires appropriate quantitative measurement tools. One significant impediment for member organizations at the outset of the initiative in 2006 was a general lack of sufficient data generated by such measurement tools which could shed light on changes in the level of poverty among microfinance clients. 

Since 2006, there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of poverty measurement tools both in terms of the number of institutions using these tools and in the diversity of tools available.  As an example, one of the most viable poverty measurement tools is the PPI (Progress out of Poverty Index) developed by Mark Schreiner for the Grameen Foundation with support from the CGAP/Ford Foundation Social Indicators Project. Since its development in 2006, the PPI is now in use by over 175 institutions in 45 countries across 4 major regions. The greater prevalence of this and many other powerful poverty measurement tools represents is a major step forward in the availability of tools to measure poverty down reach and movement out of poverty over time - an important part of the 100 Million Project goals.

* The $1/day threshold of the World Bank has since been revised to $1.25/day which the Campaign now uses for its benchmark.

 

Project Partners

Achieving Goal 2 is a big challenge and will require building collaboration among a lot of organizations with a wide range of areas of expertise.  We are developing partnerships now with the support organizations needed to help make this happen, including SEEP, the MIX, Grameen Foundation, Microfinance Opportunities, and Ideas42.  It is through these partnerships that we hope to achieve the two principle aims of the 100 Million Project. Learn more about our Project Partners!