More than Microfinance: providing training & support services

Entrepreneur: Tifa Efendic

© CARE/Jon Spaull

All microfinance is not the same

Rather, there is huge diversity in the types of microfinance institutions (MFIs) that provide financial services for low-income people. As Larry Reed writes  “… by 2011, more than 3,600 institutions reported providing loans to 205 million people. These institutions ranged from small, village-based savings and loan groups in rural West Africa to banks in Latin America valued at more than a billion dollars”. Since MFIs have differing methodologies and objectives, the impact of microfinance will also vary according to how financial services are provided and whether or not clients receive other non-financial services and support.

Why I Lend: to re-design the system

Village Savings & Loans group, Sierra Leone      

© CARE/Jenny Matthews

Why do you lend?

Like many of the services available to us in today’s ‘modern’ society, financial services are disproportionately enjoyed by the privileged.

Nearly two-thirds of the world’s adult population are left out from the existing banking world and as such, a system is being perpetuated that suits the needs of the well-off and by consequence excludes those less well-off.

Lend with care - lend for women

© CARE

Why do you lend?

It was a statistic quoted far and wide in the past month, yet it remains shocking: women do two-thirds of the world’s work, yet earn only 10 per cent of its income and own a mere one per cent of its means of production.[1] As we look back on International Women’s Month, it is important to continue to remember and support women worldwide who struggle for their livelihood year round.

77 per cent of the entrepreneurs we support at lendwithcare are women. So why is lendwithcare proud to work with so many women and why does this drive so many of our lenders?