H.M. Sofia
![[Sofia]](http://www.microcreditsummit.org/newsletter/graphics/sofia.jpg) It’s a pleasure to participate in this Meeting of Councils of the Microcredit Summit and I would like to share my deepest feelings of solidarity with the women and families who inspire this task. I would like to show my most sincere admiration for the work of the people involved with microcredit, who with excitement and effort, are trying to spread this philosophy all over the world.
The Microcredit Summit of 1997 was seen by many people as an unattainable utopia. Two years later we can give evidence, thanks to the results obtained, that although the goal was very bold, we are on track to its attainment. As the Microcredit Campaign’s honorary co-chair I share your dedication to remain loyal to the main goals of the Summit, to create financially self-sufficient institutions, to reach the poorest families, the most needy women, and to ensure that the programs show a positive impact in the lives of those people who follow it. The plenaries in these meetings will help to keep us in the line of work followed since 1997 and will allow us to revise and improve the general criteria of the action plans to match the characteristics of each region and the special features of their people.
I am aware that this meeting also has the goal of creating new drives in the heart of the Summit’s campaign. In this respect I want to express my recognition and congratulations to the Microcredit Summit of the Southern Africa region for the work that has been done since 1997. More than 300 people from 14 countries in Southern Africa met last year and promised to help 12 million of the poorest families of this region reach the proposed numbers of loans in the year 2005. This common course of action shapes the path to follow so we all can reach the goals set by the Summit of 1997 in Washington.
Only a month ago I had the opportunity to visit microcredit projects financed by my foundation in Peru with the collaboration of other NGOs, to verify how the concept of microcredit has become important even in the most inaccessible regions in the Andean mountains. This gave me as a human being, besides great satisfaction, a pride which is difficult to describe. In every village I visited, the Andean women proudly showed their achievements made for the benefit of their families. The improvements in their modest standards of living, thanks to their craft work, work in which they already include the men of the families, is a great result and an enormous step in reclaiming their personal dignity. And it’s also a very important factor in integration and family togetherness.
The projects and the results that will be exposed in this meeting are an important part of our utopia, of our dream, and are the essential reason why I feel so satisfied to be the honorary co-chair of the Microcredit Summit. When I addressed the plenary session in the Microcredit Summit of Washington in 1997, I said that I wished and hoped that the Summit could be known in the future as the summit of justice and solidarity. Thanks to your work and your collaboration today, I know that we are ready to achieve this. I thank very much the authorities of Côte d’Ivoire for their hospitality.
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