In This Issue

Speech Excerpts from the Microcredit Summit +5

Plenary Session: Ensuring Impact

International Year of Microcredit

Archived Issues

Vol 1 Iss 4 Sept. '03
Vol 1 Iss 3 July '03
Vol 1 Iss 2 May '03
Vol 1 Iss 1 March '03

» Current Issue

E-News Information

Reprinting Permissions

Sponsors for the Microcredit Summit +5

Subscribe to Microcredit Summit E-News

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)

Thank you, all of you, for being part of this Microcredit Summit +5. I really came by just to applaud you and to be a cheerleader and advocate for what you're doing and what we all must do if the dreams and goals of the first Microcredit Summit are to be realized. As Sam said, microcredit is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart and is still in my view one of the great opportunities to bring to scale the poverty reduction agenda that many of us share. I just caught the tail end of Jennifer [Meehan]'s remarks and the kind of technical advice that CASHPOR and that many of the groups that will be meeting together and many of the seminars according to the program will be addressing is exactly where we need now to go in the further sophistication of this important work.

The first Microcredit Summit in Washington D.C. five years ago highlighted the effectiveness of using small loans to help the most destitute people in our world pull themselves out of poverty. I have seen this aspect of microcredit finance work in so many different settings, on so many different continents, in so many different places. I became involved with microcredit more than 20 years ago and I am as convinced today as I was then that we have only just begun to realize its potential.

As we look forward we're going to have to be smarter and frankly more willing to assess ourselves about what works and what doesn't work and we're going to have to continue to find allies and supporters in the larger world of commercial credit, governments, NGO's, private sector partners and non-profit foundations. I have seen how it works in Bangladesh and in Kyrgystan, in Morocco, in Nicaragua, in the United States, but I know that we still have not brought it to scale. The direct impact can revolutionize a life. The slightly larger ripple effect can change attitudes and behaviors and begin to alter the lives of small groups and even villages. It can even begin to tackle some of our stubborn problems with respect to public health and environmental protection, schooling rates for girls and boys, access to...affordable, nutritional food, clean water and many other social challenges.

So we know that in this decade microfinance is poised to evolve into a dominant part of the mainstream financial sector in many developing countries and in the process substantially increase economic pluralism, reduce poverty and alter gender inequities. Now that is if we do our job and if we have partners who stand with us. I am pleased that you will be hearing from Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill. I hope to work with Secretary O'Neill as well as the administration and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress to insure that our foreign investment dollars fertilize the opportunities for microfinance throughout the world. As I look at your program which is filled with very specific, technical information and advice, I think of how far we've come.

So part of the unfinished vision of microfinance is to alter the minds of the powerful about the powerless. To provide a vision and an international platform for respecting what poor people bring to the table for creating governmental and non-governmental means for not only respecting that but institutionalizing that respect by beginning to provide property rights, by recognizing that access to credit is often denied because it's not just expensive to provide but it is a tool of oppression used to keep people poor instead of opening doors to greater opportunity for them. And if we are serious about bringing micro finance to its full fruition then we have to be serious about embedding that mission in a changed attitude between the powerful and the powerless around our world and there is much work that we each can do.

But together we have to send a message from this [place] that the goal, the hundred million person goal is a realistic goal. It is not a pipe dream. But what stands in the way of it being realized is the unwillingness of many in positions of power to translate respect into resources. So the first step is to attain a level of respect for those who labor day in and day out, living on less than a dollar a day doing the best they can to care for their children and their families and then using resources to give those people who's survival skills are frankly better than mine, a chance to get beyond where they are today.

And for anyone who is serious about poverty reduction that is the new paradigm. It is not just a paradigm about how we provide different equity instruments as important as then are. It is not just a paradigm about providing more technical assistance, or breaking down the doors of the commercial institutions, whose loan repayment rates will never equal most microcredit loan repayment rates. It is also a mission of transforming hearts, minds, and attitudes. And it is not just for those who are the poorest among us, but even in our own country there are still many places and many people who don't have access to the credit they need to build a better future for themselves.

.... So this is a tool that can be used everywhere, but it is most urgently needed in those places where it can literally transform lives and revolutionize society. So we have a lot of work to do and I thank you for being part of this important mission. Thank you very much.

Read remarks by Hugh Grant