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

Jack Litzenberg, Senior Program Officer and Poverty Team Coordinator, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Original transcription by Rebecca Kooshakjian

First let me say that the Mott Foundation has been very proud to support the Microcredit Summit Campaign since its inception in 1997. Charles Stewart Mott created the foundation to build community. [This Campaign is] unique in that it aims to increase the economic self-reliance of 100 million of the world’s poorest families. I’m sure that Mr. Mott would be honored to have his name associated with this worthy campaign.

I want to share with you one quote that burns in my mind, and I think really would help fortify the passion that the foundation has in its hopes that the goal of the campaign is realized over the next five years. This quote, which is cited by Susy Cheston and Lisa Kuhn in their paper, "Empowering Women through Microfinance," comes from Margaret Asare, a client of the Sinapi Aba Trust (SAT) in Ghana. If you remember she was cited as saying, "At first my family members did not count me worthy to be called when there was a problem or decision-making, but now through SAT I am numbered among human beings."

There are 240 million more families on the globe that are not numbered as human beings. The bottom line is that for this multitude, poverty is the worst form of oppression and opportunity is one of the keys that unlocks such oppression. Therefore microcredit should no longer be questioned as a development strategy because it does deliver opportunity to those that want to be numbered among human beings. I believe the universal appeal of microcredit is that it is simplistic, and that it does deliver to the poor simply what it promises: small amounts of capital blended with knowledge that can enable people to become self-reliant, increase incomes, build assets, and to be numbered among human beings.

If as Aristotle said, the purpose of this state is to serve its people, then no government—no body of governments nor any government institution—should be opposed to investing in its people. Simultaneously, interventions that create wealth and build assets can and should attract capital markets. Therefore, I leave you with this thought: that microcredit need not apologize to others in the development community for what it has accomplished with scarce resources. Instead, its impact should be chronicled in the world media, and the effective delivery of credit to the world’s poor be honored as a most effective form of development.

Hence, let the message go forth that the question should no longer be, "Why microcredit?": the question should become, "Why are not more world resources invested in microcredit already?" After all, it has already allowed so many to be numbered among human beings. Thank you.

Read remarks by Victor Menezes