Grameen Foundation : What we do
What we do
Microfinance - a powerful poverty-fighting tool: Microfinance helps people to escape poverty by giving them collateral-free loans and other financial services to support income-generating businesses. As each loan is repaid, the money is redistributed as loans to others, thereby mulitiplying its impact. For Fatima, a FONDEP client in Morocco, the loans have helped her build a business and new horizons for her children.
We support microfinance programs that enable the poor, mostly women, to lift themselves out of poverty and make better lives for their families. To do this, we partner with a worldwide network of microfinance institutions. Our work focuses on four key areas:
Supporting microfinance institutions
Our partner microfinance institutions (MFIs) work on the front lines daily, meeting the needs of clients and reaching out to others who can benefit from microfinance. To help them be efficient and effective and increase their outreach, we provide microfinance program support in the form of funding, technical assistance, training and new technology.
Harnessing the power of technology
Grameen Foundation's Technology Center is the leader in information and communications technology (ICT) initiatives that are dedicated exclusively to advancing microfinance. To help microfinance reach its full potential, we are driving industry-changing innovations that increase the efficiency of microfinance institutions' operations, create new microbusiness opportunities for the poor, and provide telecommunications access for the world's rural poor.
Connecting microfinance institutions with capital markets
Our Capital Management and Advisory Center is harnessing the vast resources of local and international capital markets to bring new financial resources to our microfinance institution partners. With more than 400 million poor people cut off from financial services, there is a huge, unmet need for microfinance. To reach them, MFIs need capital beyond the traditional philanthropic support to rapidly expand their operations and increase outreach.
Expanding microfinance industry knowledge
New ideas and innovative thinking will drive the expansion and effectiveness of microfinance. Knowledge sharing is an important component of our work. To have the greatest impact on global poverty, we are committed to sharing ideas and innovations with the wider microfinance community. We hope this "open-sourcing" of information will guide other organizations in improving the industry's outreach to the more than one billion people living in abject poverty.
Social Business
In January 2008, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus introduced a new term to the business lexicon: social business. Writing in his new book, Creating a World without Poverty, Yunus laid out the framework for two social business models and urged others to adopt them in the fight against global poverty. A social business is social-objective driven. In the first model, the company’s mission is achieved through creating or supporting sustainable "non-loss" business enterprises where all of the profits are ploughed back into the company rather than being distributed to shareholders. The second social business model is one which is profit-driven, but owned and operated entirely by the poor, who receive all company profits.
Learn more about social business on the Grameen Foundation blog.
Grameen Capital India and Grameen-Jameel Pan Arab Microfinance Limited are two social businesses that have already been launched with the support of Grameen Foundation.
Grameen Foundation : What we do
Grameen Foundation uses microfinance and innovative technology to fight global poverty and bring opportunities to the world's poorest people. With tiny loans and financial services, we help the poor, mostly women, start businesses and escape poverty. Our global network of 55 microfinance institution (MFI) partners including our Growth Guarantee partners has touched more than 34 million people in 24 countries. In addition, we introduced and now sustain technology initiatives (Mifos and Village Phone) in Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda, bringing our total country outreach to 28.
+1-202-628-3560 www.grameenfoundation.org
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