DEVELOPMENT
REPORT - Microcredit Summit Campaign
By Jill Moss
This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English
Development Report.
In many developing nations, more than fifty percent
of workers are self-employed. They might move from temporary job to
temporary job. Or they may own a small business. Many poor people would
like to start a business, but cannot get a bank
loan（银行贷款）.
One tool to fight poverty is the use of microcredit
loans. These are small loans for poor people who want to turn self-employment
projects into businesses. In some countries, the loans may start out
as small as twenty dollars. People may also receive training to learn
how to operate a business.
In 1997, delegates from 137 nations attended a conference
in Washington, D.C. They agreed to give microcredit loans to one-hundred-million
of the world's poorest families by 2005.
An organization in the United States called the Results
Educational Fund supports the campaign. It says more than forty-one-million
families around the world have received microcredit so far. The Results
Educational Fund says the nine-year campaign is well on the way to its
goal.
The Microcredit Summit Campaign brings together lenders,
aid groups, educators, non-governmental organizations and others. The
campaign has four main ideas. The first is to reach the poorest families
in each country. The World Bank estimates that over one-thousand-million
people live on less than one dollar a day.
The second goal is to reach out especially to women.
Campaign officials say experience shows that women are less likely than
men to waste their earnings. They say women are more likely to invest
their profits in their families and businesses. So the campaign seeks
to give women more power.
The third goal is to create loan organizations that
are financially strong. And the fourth is to make sure the programs
have a measurable effect on the lives of the families that receive microcredit.
There are more than 2,500 microcredit organizations
around the world. Campaign officials say most do charge interest, but
often use their earnings to reach more people. They also say that some
banks have seen the success of microcredit and recognized it as a good
market.
The Web site for the campaign is microcreditsummit,
all one word, dot o-r-g.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written
by Jill Moss. I'm Robert Cohen.
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