Sarah Doe of Liberia fled to Côte d'Ivoire due to the war. Her husband died in the war leaving her to fend for their ten children on her own. She started with a $16 loan to establish her business selling doughnuts. Her business has grown with hard work and additional loans. She has been able to send four of her children to school and establish a savings account. Ms. Doe plans to move back to Liberia once the house that she has started building in Pleebo, is completed. -- IRC-SEAD success story. On February 2-4, 1997 more than 2,900 people representing 1,500 institutions from 137 countries gathered at the Microcredit Summit in Washington, D.C. Together they launched a nine-year campaign to reach 100 million of the world=s poorest families, especially the women of those families, with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the year 2005. On the fourth anniversary of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, the Microcredit Summit Campaign looks at its contribution to that effort. In China, delegates resolved that action should be taken to provide women in poverty with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions as part of an overall commitment to improve the status of women worldwide. The most recent survey of microfinance programs involved in this global campaign reveals that of the 925 institutions that reported, those members are reaching 12.6 million poorest clients with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services. Seventy-two percent of all poorest clients, or 9.1 million, are reached by just 34 programs. Seventy-six percent of their clients are women (see annex 1). The survey also reveals that among the most important, immediate challenges facing the global campaign is the development of simple, cost-effective measurements for determining the poverty level of microfinance clients. At the Summit, nine central themes were extracted from the 55-page Declaration and Plan of Action and enunciated at the Summit Council meetings. These themes addressed a wide variety of issues, from underscoring that microcredit is not a panacea but part of a larger movement working to alleviate poverty, to warning against an indiscriminate flow of resources to programs that are not ready for the next level of growth. The essence of the Microcredit Summit, however, can be summarized in the following four core themes. 1. Reaching the Poorest: The Summit recognizes that the field of microfinance includes all those institutions providing financial and other services to constituencies that are overlooked by the traditional banking sector. The goal of the Summit, however, focuses on outreach to the poorest families, defined in the Declaration and Plan of Action as families in developing countries among the bottom 50 percent of those living below the poverty line. Within industrialized countries the Summit is focused on all of those living below the poverty line. 2. Reaching Women: Of the 1.5 billion people living on under US$1 per day, 1 billion of them are women. Experience shows that women are a good credit risk, and that woman-run businesses tend to benefit family members more directly than those run by men. At the same time, through earning an income women achieve a higher status in their homes. 3. Building Financially Self-Sufficient Institutions: Experience has shown that microfinance programs in developing countries can structure their interest rates and fees to eventually cover their operating and financial costs. The Declaration and Plan of Action emphasizes the importance of programs in developing countries reaching financial self-sufficiency. Though the economic context in industrialized countries is radically different, the Summit encourages programs in industrialized countries to explore ways of becoming self-sufficient so that, to the greatest extent possible, their operating costs will be covered through direct revenue from program services. 4. Ensuring Positive Impact on the Lives of Clients and their Families: While financial measures such as program repayment rates give an indication of the strength of a microcredit institution, the Microcredit Summit is committed to programs having a measurable, positive impact on the lives of the very poor families.
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