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Microfinance and Poverty Alleviation: United Nations Collaboration with Chinese Experiments

Author: Susan H. Holcombe Xu Xianmei Date:1996-10

New guidelines to help investors measure success of microfinance institutions

According to this news article, socially responsible investors are choosing to invest in microfinance to help alleviate poverty. By means of often very small loans, financial services, and technology, microfinance helps the poor, often women, to start self-sustaining businesses in order to escape...

Citi Dhaka arranges loan for NGO micro-finance institution

In July 2009, Citi Dhaka helped arrange a syndicated loan (subscribed by a group of local banks) for $21.7 million for BURO, a not-for-profit that is one of the fastest growing microfinance institutions in Bangladesh. BURO Bangladesh is a specialized micro-finance institution that provides high...

Surviving disaster and supporting recovery: A guidebook for microfinance institutions

This guide seeks to assist MFIs in defining an institutional strategy for disaster preparedness. It lays out the steps for assessing the potential risk of disaster, the clients’ needs and the institutional capacity to respond. Based on assessments, it offers a variety of recommendations for...

Make Poverty Business: Increase Profits and Reduce Risks by Engaging with the Poor

Make Poverty Business: Increase Profits and Reduce Risks by Engaging with the Poor (2006) is a book by Craig Wilson and Peter Wilson that sets out to provide a blueprint for on-the-ground managers of multinational corporations to create sustainable profits and reduce country risk by helping...

US Agency for International Development (USAID) - Supports Economic Empowerment for the World's Poor Through Microfinance (press release)

The press release from USAID outlines the agency's involvement in micro enterprise development projects during the 1990s, and claims that ‛micro enterprise development, providing credit and economic opportunity to the disenfranchised poor, helps ensure that the benefits of economic growth are...

Micro Enterprise success in Bangladesh

The Bangladesh Krishi Bank was established in 1973 with the objective of strengthening the rural economy by extending credit support to the agricultural and agro-based sectors. In consideration of the importance of Micro-Credit and with the objective of generating employment as well as encouraging...

Opportunities for the Majority: Bank initiative that promotes and finances private sector business models

The Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) Initiative promotes and finances market-based, sustainable business models that engage private sector companies, local governments and communities in the development and delivery of quality products and services for the majority of the population of Latin...

A discussion paper on social intrapreneurship

This paper produced by the Doughty Centre at the Cranfield University examines the potential value of social intrapreneurship, and provisionally defines a social intrapreneur as "a person within a large corporation who takes direct initiative for innovation which addresses social or environmental...

Scaling Up Inclusive Business: Advancing the Knowledge and Action Agenda

This is a report produced for the International Finance Corporation. It is based on 14 IFC client case studies and draws on other research undertaken by IFC and the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School on inclusive business, including recent research supported by the Bill & Melinda...

Business Models that Make a Difference

This is a publication produced by IFC (the International Finance Corporation) arguing that inclusive business models are good for business.

Enterprise Solutions to Poverty: Opportunities and Challenges for the International Development Community and Big Business

Enterprise Solutions to Poverty: Opportunities and Challenges for the International Development Community and Big Business, a report written by the Shell Foundation, argues that enterprise and business thinking must be placed at the heart of efforts to address poverty. The report concludes by...

Microcredit and other loan programs in protracted refugee situations

Aid agencies recognise the need to support refugees’ own efforts to pursue livelihoods, but there are few livelihoods resources available. Microcredit and other types of loan programs have not been widely attempted, because refugees and IDPs are considered too geographically unstable –...

Micro-Enterprise Online Library

Micro-Enterprise Online Libary, published by National Institute for Social Science Information, provides an online micro-enterprise research library.

Equator Principles

The Equator Principles (EPs) are a credit risk management framework for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in project finance transactions. Project finance is often used to fund the development and construction of major infrastructure and industrial projects.The EPs...

Virtual Library on Microcredit

The Virtual Library on Microcredit is an online resource published by the Global Development Research Centre. The Library collects articles, conference reports, case studies, publications on microcredit issues and lists of microcredit organisations. It also provides links to internet resources...

Food Sustainability: a Guide to the Private Sector

A practical and illustrative guide for businesses that presents sets of inspirational examples of how companies can contribute to sustainable food production and supply. Examples cover various sectors and show actions of small companies as well as multinational corporations from around the world. ...

Doing Business with the World: The New Role of Corporate Leadership in Global Development

Doing Business with the World, a publication of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), describes how companies can contribute to global sustainable development through their core businesses in a way that is profitable for the companies and good for development.

Microcredit Summit

Micro credit programmes offer small loans, and other financial services such as savings, to very poor people for self-employment projects that generate income, allowing them to care for themselves and their families. The Micro credit Summit Campaign brings together micro credit practitioners,...

BBC article: So Afr-Eco Community Upliftment Project (SAECUP)

SAECUP is a non-profit organisation established a decade ago in South Africa to provide refuge for poor women and children. This BBC article explains the history behind SAECUP, and includes an interview with the founder. Over 130 woman are involved in a micro enterprise project, which transforms...