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Freedom from Hunger created a curriculum for Credit with Education that directly addresses women’s most pressing needs. Credit with Education is an effective, practical and financially self-sustaining way for financial service organizations to provide value-added microfinance that supports the self-help efforts of poor women and families, even those so poor they are chronically hungry.

The learning sessions are dialogue-based, incorporating new information with the knowledge and experience of the group members. The women don’t need to read or write to learn. In story, role-play, demonstration, discussion and song, they explore new ideas, share what they know, and help each other find the courage to try new things that improve their lives.

Credit with Education provides participants with small working capital loans, a safe place to deposit savings, and education in health and nutrition topics as well as business management. When delivered to very poor women who have come together to form joint-liability borrower groups, these components synergistically can yield an increase in household food security and individual nutrition and health status, due to increases in women’s incomes and savings, their improved nutrition and health practices, and their enhanced self-confidence, or empowerment.

Confident of the positive impacts of Credit with Education, Freedom from Hunger has developed a strategy of working with and through in-country partners to reach greater numbers of the one billion chronically hungry people in the world. In the past year, their staff of 42 professionals has worked with dozens of local financial service organizations (microfinance institutions, credit unions and rural banks) in 17 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America to offer Credit with Education to hundreds of thousands of women of poor, mostly rural families.