Dr Ajaz Ahmed Khan: What role for Islamic microfinance?

Conventional interest based microfinance has come under increasing scrutiny and its benefits questioned in recent years. Does Islamic microfinance present a viable alternative? Quite possibly.



Day Three: BBC3's Stacey Dooley returns to Sarajevo to meet more lendwithcare.org entrepreneurs

On her final day visiting lendwithcare.org entrepreneurs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Stacey Dooley returns to Sarajevo and meets Mediha ...

Stacey with Mediha in her tailor shop in Sarajevo© CARE/Jon Spaull

Day Two: BBC3 journalist, Stacey Dooley, visits lendwithcare.org entrepreneurs in Srebrenica

On her second day visiting female entrepreneurs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, BBC3's Stacey Dooley travels to Srebrenica to see how microloans provided through lendwithcare.org are changing lives.

BBC3's Stacey Dooley with Sefika and her son, Adnam© CARE/Jon Spaull

BBC Three journalist, Stacey Dooley, visits lendwithcare entrepreneurs in Bosnia-Herzegovina

This week BBC Three journalist, Stacey Dooley, is visiting female entrepreneurs in Bosnia-Herzegovina who have received microloans through lendwithcare.org. Below she describes her first day meeting Azra Vatrenjak ...

Azra Vatrenjak in her shop in Sarajevo © CARE

Microfinance over the last 10 years | Reflections and suggestions for the future

The UK's All Party Parliamentary Group on Microfinance recently celebrated 10 years' of raising awareness of microfinance and the role it can play in reducing poverty. At an event, hosted by CARE International, Dr Ajaz Khan (lendwithcare.org's Microfinance Advisor) reflected on the last 10 years and made some suggestions for the future.

Since the All Party Parliamentary Microfinance Group was started 10 years ago, although I am sure the link is coincidental, microfinance has become much more widespread and received increasing recognition – the United Nations proclaimed 2005 as the year of microcredit, one of the pioneers of modern microfinance Muhammad Yunus and Grameen won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and perhaps the ultimate accolade of all, as my children pointed out, in 2010 microfinance was featured on an episode of The Simpsons.

A Day in the Life of ... A Loan Officer from Ecuador

Laura Sarango is a loan officer at fundación FACES, lendwithcare.org's partner microfinance institution in Ecuador. She has very kindly taken time out of her busy schedule to describe an average day in her office.

Laura (in the purple t-shirt) with her colleague, Fernando, and loan officers from the Malcatos office
© CARE

"My name is Laura and my official role within FACES is to provide financial and health education to all of FACES’ customers. I am also in charge of collecting the customer profiles that we send to lendwithcare to be uploaded to their website. When I start my work day the first thing I do is review all the activities that I have planned for the day and write them down in my notebook. I then usually log-on to my computer to check my emails and then log-in to the lendwithcare system so I can check the status of the loans we have on the site as well upload any outstanding stories.

Can Microfinance Create Sustainable Businesses?

Lendwithcare.org's Microfinance Advisor, Dr Ajaz Ahmed Khan, answers one lenders very pertinent question

Banking on Change in Uganda

© CARE/Tine Frank

A business owner and lendwithcare lender raised a very important question in an email to the lendwithcare team recently. Attracted to the lendwithcare model due to its emphasis on sustainable development and providing the working poor with a hand up instead of a hand out, he asked how, with loans alone, micro-entrepreneurs were able to create truly sustainable businesses that could benefit whole communities. We thought we would share Ajaz's answer with you all ...