From the Fields http://www.wrcanada.org en-us Copyright 2010 World Relief Canada. All rights reserved Farming That Makes Sense Dave Clubine Jul. 27, 2010
Conservation farming has been proven to boost the agricultural production of even the smallest farm plots, and improve the food security of the most vulnerable of households. In fact, conservation farming is custom made for the poorest of farmers and the smallest of plots because it does not depend on expensive inputs, but on the most basic needs of the land and the crops.

Conservation farming is built on the premise that natural and already available resources are the best ones to use to work with and for the land. Farmers learn the negative side of practices like ploughing and tilling, which actually leads to the degradation of soil when enriching organic matter is disturbed and destroyed. They learn the benefits of a stable, rich soil cover, and only disturbing the soil enough
to plant the seed, enabling the ground cover to retain water and nutrients to a much higher degree.

Farmers also learn about mulching and crop rotation, two other key principles of conservation farming that help ensure optimal soil health and crop production. The Canadian Foodgrains Bank has witnessed farmers doubling and sometimes tripling their yields as they converted to conservation farming.]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/farming-that-makes-sense Kenya Savings For Life Program Dave Clubine Jul. 28, 2010















The goal for the 800 community groups that World Relief Canada will be helping to form, train and succeed in Kenya, is for members to accumulate very small amounts of savings, pool these precious resources, and then provide micro-loans to each other out of this community fund. The loans will be for income-generating activities that will improve their livelihoods, their families and their communities.
Severe poverty is an ever-present reality in Kenya, a country where AIDS-related diseases kill 700 Kenyans a day. Fifty-eight percent of the population live below $2 US a day.  

Microfinance, especially this savings group approach, provides a way out and a way forward for the poor who would be otherwise neglected by the traditional banking system. The 800 community-based village groups represent 15,000 members, 60% of whom are women, and they are part of World Relief Canada's Kenya Savings for Life [KSFL] program. KSFL expects to “graduate” 8,000 members into fully self-managed savings groups over the next five years. Each of the 800 groups will be trained how to develop group policies, how to conduct savings and lending operations, and how to conduct an end of cycle (typical 10-12 months) “share out” when the savings and accumulated loan interest will be shared out to group members, in proportion to their savings activities. The program will be carefully monitored and evaluated every step of the way, to ensure that the needs of the savers and entrepreneurs are anticipated and met as they continue on their journey to being more empowered, economically stable households and communities.

When HIV and Microfinance Meet

Any microfinance program working in sub-Saharan Africa will come face-to-face, quickly, with the HIV/AIDS crisis. How could it not when two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS victims — many of them in the working prime of their lives — live there? Microfinance, as a tool for reaching the world's bank-less, can also be a tool for improving the lives of its clients already impacted by the devastation of HIV/AIDS.
It is hard to think of someone less likely to qualify for a traditional bank loan than an African woman who has HIV/AIDS, for example. But microfinance does not only have a plan, it has a heart. By welcoming borrowers who have been impacted by HIV/AIDS, microfinance helps these women and men regain and grow their livelihoods. Their dignity and ability to care for their own families is gradually restored. But there is much more to this story. 

Microfinance can also help stop HIV/AIDS in its tracks, by incorporating AIDS awareness and prevention strategies in its mandatory business training seminars. Debrework Zewdie, Director of the Global HIV/AIDS Program for the World Bank, has called microfinance “the missing link in the fight against AIDS.” That is because, increasingly, microfinance providers, like World Relief Canada, incorporate HIV/AIDS support and education into the savings and lending process. Clients and entire communities learn how to prevent the disease from spreading, and how to treat and support community members who are already living with the reality of HIV/AIDS, along with learning the sound business practices that help turn their entrepreneurial plans into life-changing reality. In fact, in the Kenya Savings for Life program alone, 20% of the clients will be caregivers of orphans or people living with HIV/AIDS.

To help make a difference for people in the Kenya Savings For Life Program, please donate here.
                               ]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/kenya-savings-for-life-program Rwanda Microfinance Program Ready to Stand Own Its Own! Dave Clubine Jul. 27, 2010 URWEGO Opportunity Bank was able to increase the number of its mostly female clients from just over 29,000 to more than 35,000. The lives of those clients have changed as they have been able to grow their businesses, send their children to school, purchase and grow nutritious food for their families, and even save for the future. The women who took out loans managed them and grew their incomes, but also grew in status by becoming financially independent and participating more fully in society.

It is time for World Relief Canada to wrap up its involvement with  the URWEGO Opportunity Bank of Rwanda, which is now a strong and sustainable force to be reckoned with in the economic development and future of Rwanda. In fact, in a recent WRC visit to Rwanda, the bank and its director were singled out in government meetings as one of the most positive developments in Rwanda’s economic development. This success story, from what has been one of the most troubled spots on Earth, confirms what we already know. Microfinance, built with sustainability and local ownership as priorities, can change the future of any country.]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/rwanda-microfinance-program-ready-to-stand-own-its-own World Relief Canada Partnering With CIDA For New Agreement Dave Clubine Jul. 28, 2010 2:1 CIDA Match Challenges Donors

“I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.” Those are famous words from Muhammad Yunus, a professor of economics from Bangladesh who ignited the global microfinance movement when he started a bank for the poor in his home country. More than 30 years later, microfinance — small loans to poor entrepreneurs (most often women) — has spread to every continent and changed the face of development work. And changed countless lives.
















WRC, in partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), is on the brink of helping to change many, many more with a five-year Microfinance Program Agreement that will bring the transformative potential of microfinance to the lives of 56,000 new entrepreneurs. 

In the next five years, you will be hearing more about this agreement and how World Relief Canada is helping to offer small loans and encourage sound business practices and savings through: Koinonia Microfinance [KMF] in Bangladesh (the birthplace of microfinance);Turame Community Finance [TCF] in Burundi; Local Enterprise Assistance Program [LEAP] in Liberia; Dutabarane Shigikirana Savings for Life [SSFL] also in Burundi and World Relief Kenya Savings for Life [KSFL] in Kenya.

World Relief Canada will adopt a two-pronged approach to the development of this expanded microfinance endeavour. We will focus on the development of local and sustainable microfinance institutions [MFIs], which offer micro-lending services to poor people, enabling them to develop their businesses and thereby improve their incomes and livelihoods. MFIs depend on external capital and are the form of microfinance that Canadian donors are most familiar with.

We will also build Savings Group(SG) programs of local partner organizations. These SG programs will provide organization and training to community-based groups of poor entrepreneurs to pool their own savings and provide loans for income-generating activities within their own communities, improving their incomes and livelihoods. Savings Groups are built on local, internally-generated capital. Both approaches build capacity, sustainability and have gender equality and protection of the environment as essential business practices. Both approaches change lives.

So, whose lives will be changed? The program’s direct beneficiaries will be 106,000 of the poorest entrepreneurs, 90% of them being women. Don't forget the more than 530,000 family members who will — according to studies on the success of microfinance  — see an improvement in their income, their health, their ability to attend school and work and their access to a steady and dependable source of nutritional food.

The ripple impact of microfinance to strengthen entire families, communities — and even the agencies that offer the loans — is one of the reasons microfinance is so often the chosen tool of transformation and a focus for World Relief Canada and CIDA in the next five years.

Making sure Microfinance Works

World Relief Canada applies the Maximizing Microfinance Aid Effectiveness principles of CGAP, an independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world's poor, to ensure the microfinance programs we initiate work best for the poor.

The principles are:
• facilitate strategic clarity
• provide quality technical support
• build in accountability for results
• knowledge management
• use appropriate finance and capacity building instruments
• the coordination and use of comparative advantage

Going Deeper with Microfinance

Burundi is one of the focus countries for World Relief Canada’s Microfinance Program Agreement. Tucked between Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi's people are struggling to rebuild and restore their lives after a civil war ravaged their country from 1993 to 2005. As people began to move back to the communities they had been displaced from, and pick up the pieces of their lives, it was clear that traditional banking services — severely limited even to those with resources — were not available at all to the poorest of the poor.

Microfinance is a key strategy for improving the lives of the poor in Burundi. Turame Community Finance is the lending institution built to serve the poor of Burundi with financial services. From 2010-2015, World Relief Canada will work closely with Turame to expand the amount of loans and training it can provide throughout the entire country. WRC will also focus on making Turame Community Finance an even more viable and sustainable institution, run by local experts who are completely committed to poverty reduction. The number of clients Turame serves will grow from 17,000 to 27,000. WRC is expecting that, after five years of concentrated work with Turame, all of the client's children will be able to attend primary school, with at least half progressing to secondary education. There will be a significant improvement in the health of children and entire households as mothers, the primary recipients of Turame's loans, will be able to afford to feed their children at least twice a day as their household income rises.

In Burundi, World Relief Canada is not just working with partner institutions. We are working with churches that are committed to transforming the lives of the poor. Dutabarane, a local organization of churches, will be able to expand Shigikirana Savings for Life [SSFL] program, a church-run savings group program. In the next five years, Dutabarane, partnering with World Relief Canada, will organize and train 1,000 community-based village groups of the very poor (18,000 members in total) to accumulate very small amounts of savings, pool those resources and provide micro-loans to each other for income-generating activities to improve their livelihoods. As women form groups to support each other's endeavours, they grow in both power and potential within their communities and within their own homes.

On the other side of the world in Bangladesh, microfinance is a transformative agent in the lives of women, who bear a disproportionate load of poverty, discrimination, poor health and oppression as they struggle to improve life for themselves and their children. In the next five years, World Relief Canada will partner with Koinonia to increase its client base from 20,000 to 26,000 entrepreneurs who are trained in business practices, credit, health and techniques to protect and expand their enterprises. World Relief Canada and Koinonia expect
a 20% increase in average household income because of this expanded project.











Over on the west coast of Africa, WRC is working in Liberia with LEAP, a microfinance provider that has survived, like its country, through several rounds of civil war. LEAP is one of the most experienced lenders to the poor in Liberia, and it is poised to extend its impact far beyond the borders of Monrovia, the capital city. In the next five years World Relief Canada, through the CIDA microfinance agreement, will assist LEAP to increase its clients from 15,000 to 22,000, while ensuring that each of those clients grows in business management skills. We expect the average household income of LEAP's clients to increase by 20%, improving life for families and communities.

Rwanda Microfinance Program Ready to Stand Own Its Own!
    
There is great news from Rwanda! World Relief Canada has worked for several years with the URWEGO Opportunity Bank in Rwanda, providing microfinance loans to the poor of that country and building the capacity of this bank to continue on strongly into the future.
URWEGO Opportunity Bank was able to increase the number of its mostly female clients from just over 29,000 to more than 35,000. The lives of those clients have changed as they have been able to grow their businesses, send their children to school, purchase and grow nutritious food for their families, and even save for the future. The women who took out loans managed them and grew their incomes, but also grew in status by becoming financially independent and participating more fully in society.

It is time for World Relief Canada to wrap up its involvement with  the URWEGO Opportunity Bank of Rwanda, which is now a strong and sustainable force to be reckoned with in the economic development and future of Rwanda. In fact, in a recent WRC visit to Rwanda, the bank and its director were singled out in government meetings as one of the most positive developments in Rwanda’s economic development. This success story, from what has been one of the most troubled spots on Earth, confirms what we already know. Microfinance, built with sustainability and local ownership as priorities, can change the future of any country.

Farming That Makes Sense

Conservation farming makes sense in Africa. It is a style of farming that holds the needs of the farmer and what is best for the environment — and therefore the farmer in the long-term — as equal priorities. The Canadian Foodgrains Bank, of which World Relief Canada is a member, is promoting and supporting partner capacity building for conservation farming.

Conservation farming has been proven to boost the agricultural production of even the smallest farm plots, and improve the food security of the most vulnerable of households. In fact, conservation farming is custom made for the poorest of farmers and the smallest of plots because it does not depend on expensive inputs, but on the most basic needs of the land and the crops.

Conservation farming is built on the premise that natural and already available resources are the best ones to use to work with and for the land. Farmers learn the negative side of practices like ploughing and tilling, which actually leads to the degradation of soil when enriching organic matter is disturbed and destroyed. They learn the benefits of a stable, rich soil cover, and only disturbing the soil enough
to plant the seed, enabling the ground cover to retain water and nutrients to a much higher degree.

Farmers also learn about mulching and crop rotation, two other key principles of conservation farming that help ensure optimal soil health and crop production. The Canadian Foodgrains Bank has witnessed farmers doubling and sometimes tripling their yields as they converted to conservation farming.

Kenya Savings For Life Program

Imagine yourself, if you can, in a room with 20 women and men in a small village in Kenya. They are listening eagerly to a presentation by a community worker who is helping them come up with strategies for saving very small amounts of money. The amounts sound like nothing to you, but it is clearly a financial stretch for these people. You can see the eagerness and desire of the participants to accomplish this goal. One woman, though, seems particularly discouraged and uncertain if she can manage, but the others offer to come alongside and help, to keep her accountable. They tell her to keep the goal in mind.
















The goal for the 800 community groups that World Relief Canada will be helping to form, train and succeed in Kenya, is for members to accumulate very small amounts of savings, pool these precious resources, and then provide micro-loans to each other out of this community fund. The loans will be for income-generating activities that will improve their livelihoods, their families and their communities.
Severe poverty is an ever-present reality in Kenya, a country where AIDS-related diseases kill 700 Kenyans a day. Fifty-eight percent of the population live below $2 US a day.  

Microfinance, especially this savings group approach, provides a way out and a way forward for the poor who would be otherwise neglected by the traditional banking system. The 800 community-based village groups represent 15,000 members, 60% of whom are women, and they are part of World Relief Canada's Kenya Savings for Life [KSFL] program. KSFL expects to “graduate” 8,000 members into fully self-managed savings groups over the next five years. Each of the 800 groups will be trained how to develop group policies, how to conduct savings and lending operations, and how to conduct an end of cycle (typical 10-12 months) “share out” when the savings and accumulated loan interest will be shared out to group members, in proportion to their savings activities. The program will be carefully monitored and evaluated every step of the way, to ensure that the needs of the savers and entrepreneurs are anticipated and met as they continue on their journey to being more empowered, economically stable households and communities.

When HIV and Microfinance Meet

Any microfinance program working in sub-Saharan Africa will come face-to-face, quickly, with the HIV/AIDS crisis. How could it not when two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS victims — many of them in the working prime of their lives — live there? Microfinance, as a tool for reaching the world's bank-less, can also be a tool for improving the lives of its clients already impacted by the devastation of HIV/AIDS.
It is hard to think of someone less likely to qualify for a traditional bank loan than an African woman who has HIV/AIDS, for example. But microfinance does not only have a plan, it has a heart. By welcoming borrowers who have been impacted by HIV/AIDS, microfinance helps these women and men regain and grow their livelihoods. Their dignity and ability to care for their own families is gradually restored. But there is much more to this story. 

Microfinance can also help stop HIV/AIDS in its tracks, by incorporating AIDS awareness and prevention strategies in its mandatory business training seminars. Debrework Zewdie, Director of the Global HIV/AIDS Program for the World Bank, has called microfinance “the missing link in the fight against AIDS.” That is because, increasingly, microfinance providers, like World Relief Canada, incorporate HIV/AIDS support and education into the savings and lending process. Clients and entire communities learn how to prevent the disease from spreading, and how to treat and support community members who are already living with the reality of HIV/AIDS, along with learning the sound business practices that help turn their entrepreneurial plans into life-changing reality. In fact, in the Kenya Savings for Life program alone, 20% of the clients will be caregivers of orphans or people living with HIV/AIDS.

To help make a difference in the Kenya Savings For Life Program, please donate here.
                               



  ]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/world-relief-canada-partnering-with-cida-for-new-agreement WRC Is Providing Food Security Dave Clubine Apr. 27, 2010


of millions around the world. The global economic collapse hit the poorest of the poor severely and disproportionately. The poor around the world were hit simultaneously, and are struggling to move from a place of hunger and need, to the strength of food security and the hope of a future. World Relief and partners are working in countries as diverse as India and Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Sudan, to help the poor rebuild food security, or find it for the very first time.

Meet Siyal and Mukha from India


Siyal and Mukha belong to the Mushahar caste and live in Bihar State, India. Like most Mushahar, they have no land of their own. They work as agricultural laborers for a large landowner, work that is hard and unreliable. Mukha plows while Siyal harvests the crops for their employer, who pays them with either a five kg. bag of rice or $2 a day. Siyal and Mukha live in a state of food insecurity.

World Relief Canada’s largest partner in India, EFICOR, along with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, is running a food advocacy project called the Right to Food Project, in 50 Mushahar villages. Lobbying committees are formed in each village to advocate for the rights of the Mushahar. In Mukha's village, the government now feeds the children who attend the local school, tree-planting jobs are being created and food prices subsidized, enabling families like Mukha's to buy their own healthy food.

The Maltos are another people-group in India, who are also among the poorest of the poor. World Relief is working with this group as well, helping to introduce a new way of farming that is saving lives while it saves the environment. The hilly area that is their homeland has been over-logged and decimated by slash-and-burn farming; it yields little in the way of sustainable food. WRC is working with EFICOR in 65 villages to create sustainable livelihood opportunities for local families. Farmers are learning environmentally friendly and sustainable techniques that include planting nitrogen-rich trees that enrich the soil and shed organic matter that farmers can use in other planting schemes. Irrigation, composting projects and self-help groups for savings & loans are beginning, along with vocational training to improve the lives and futures of the people in this part of India. In India, World Relief Canada is helping to build food security.

Meet Nfudia Sesay from Sierra Leone


Nfudia is a mother of six, a widow and a survivor of the civil war that gripped her country for years. She is also, like others in her village, beginning to emerge from the state of constant food insecurity she has lived in for longer than she cares to remember. Nfudia is participating in a WRC/EFSL project, that focuses on enabling families like hers to grow their own nutritious food, in a strong community setting where people are working together to improve their common future. World Relief Canada provides hand tools and seed rice, which villagers plant and harvest together, supplementing the groundnuts they grow. With the funds they earn as a group, they make loans to members, which are repaid with interest. The hold that unscrupulous money lenders has on the poor in this area is shattered. Nfudia's group is well recognized in the village as a group that is beginning to prosper, and is built on compassion and care. WRC also trains the group in leadership, hygiene and sanitation.

Nfudia lives in one village of the six communities where World Relief Canada is working. Agricultural production will increase and diversify in each of the areas as WRC supplies seed rice, groundnut seed, cassava cuttings, potato vines, vegetable seeds and tools, and trains farmers how to best use and care for them. Inland valley swamps will be transformed into fertile farmland and nutrition volunteers and lead farmers trained to continue the learning and empowerment of the families and communities. In Sierra Leone, World Relief Canada is helping to build food security.

Meet Atem Deng from Sudan


Atem is a field demonstrator who works with World Relief Canada, training farmers in one of the most devastated regions of South Sudan. Tearfund UK, WRC's partner in Sudan, trained Atem to pass on potentially life-changing information and strategies to farmers who struggled to produce and sustain nutritious crops for their families and communities. Recently, Atem was part of a team that trained 227 farmers on the most effective ways to use an ox-plough, a simple tool which has the ability to expand and cultivate land to increase its yield, and to train the oxen (not typically used as work animals) to their maximum capacity.
 
World Relief Canada is also working directly with mothers and their children in this area, to meet their immediate nutritional requirements, as well as build the capacity of the community to provide for their own members in the future. Emergency food rations are being provided, especially as the population continues to increase with war refugees returning home. Mothers and children are learning about hygiene and sanitation. They are receiving a high-energy protein porridge, made from local products, to help them grow strong. Meanwhile, the freshly-plowed fields will soon show their produce. In Sudan, WRC is helping to build food security.

Meet Moses and Janet Lemwa from Tanzania


Moses and Janet depend on farming to provide for their four children, but it is unreliable and risky. Rainfall is erratic and pests like grasshoppers destroy their produce. Moses, Janet, and their entire community are benefitting from the work World Relief Canada is doing in Tanzania with our local Anglican partner, DSC. Their family has received especially developed drought-resistant sorghum seeds. Janet and Moses are also part of a cooperative group formed for this project who will plant ground nut seeds together. They have been trained in crop production so they understand how to grow, protect and harvest their crops in the very best way. Moses is growing in confidence that his family and community are growing in food security. He knows this will impact the rest of his life, including their ability to send their children to school and provide health care for the family.
   
Moses and Janet's family represent the many families who will build food security because of this project through initiatives like: water and soil conservation; tree-planting; goat milk production; poultry production; and grain storage. In Tanzania, World Relief Canada is helping to build food security.
 


                     ]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/wrc-is-providing-food-security What Is Food Security? Dave Clubine Apr. 27, 2010
The most recent statistics released from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in October of 2009, says that 1.02 billion people in the world are undernourished, the highest number the world has seen since the 1970s. It is one/sixth of all humanity. At the 2009 World Summit on Food Security held in Rome, Jacques Diouf, FAO's Director-General, called this record-breaking number of hungry women, men and children “our tragic achievement in these modern days.”

Over eight million children (8.8 million is the most recent statistic) die each year from preventable causes, and one of the leading ones is hunger and malnutrition. UNICEF reports that 25% of the world's children are underweight. At the same time, Statistics Canada estimates that almost that same percentage of Canadian children are overweight. An interesting and sobering contrast. The difference is due, of course, to the availability of food. We have more than enough. Much of the world has way too little. We have food security. They live in a state of food insecurity.

Food security means that food is available to an individual, a family or a community, and that the food is accessible. Availability and accessibility are the hallmarks of food security. We could add to that simple definition that true food security means that food is available and accessible for the long-term. Food security is about a steady, dependable supply of food that an individual, a family or a community can eventually plan, nurture and control for their own use. We exercise our own food security here in Canada countless times a day: every time we plan a menu; plant a seed; water a garden; or drive to a grocery store and fill up a cart.

Food security can be built in every part of the world today. The FAO conference in Rome reaffirmed the world's commitment to ensuring that everyone has access to the food they need for an active and healthy life. The conference concluded that a system of governing food locally, nationally and internationally has to be created and strengthened, a system that is based on justice, equity and has as its goal the food security of the poorest of the poor. The work of farmers, overseas and right here in Canada, must be respected and protected. Investments in agriculture, here and in developing nations, must be encouraged and facilitated so that the agricultural sector can continue to grow and expand. Early and effective responses to food emergencies can help stop a bad situation from becoming even worse. The conference also noted that climate change must be factored into all food security plans, so that the plans are truly long-term and comprehensive.

Food security involves capacity, control and confidence. When groups like World Relief Canada work in an overseas community to foster food security, we concentrate on building the capacity of communities to create their own food supply and/or to create vocational opportunities that provide an income to enable individuals, families and communities to purchase the food they need. Depending on the specific setting, this might mean providing agricultural tools and training, digging gardens and wells, or enabling women to learn to sew or expand their stores through a microfinance loan. Their incomes increase and they can regularly buy healthy food for their families. Gradually, communities grow strong enough in capacity — the gardens are growing, the businesses are thriving — that people feel they are in control of their food supply and their ability to purchase food from a dependable source. They have capacity. They have control. They become confident — and rightly so — that they know where their next meal, and all the meals to follow, are coming from.
]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/what-is-food-security- A Note From The Field Dave Clubine Jan. 3, 2010 Norman Holbrook, WRC’s Asia Program Officer, had some good news to report from a recent WRC project visit to Golpalganj, Bangladesh.



“Warm greetings from Bangladesh. Just got back to Dhaka this evening from Golpalganj and quite happy to be here. The work in Goplaganj is 95% done and I'm quite pleased with the results and impact. They are really singing the praises of Koinonia & World Relief Canada! There is approximately 17,000 acres of fertile land now properly drained and due to the deepened canals they can pump irrigation water for the winter and travel by boats year round. So much of that area looked like a big marsh (memories of the Florida Everglades) in the past but now it is being cultivated. Thousands gained employment digging canals and making roads and planting trees. Many more have had land reclaimed and thousands of agricultural labourers can now find work for most of the year.”

You can make a donation and help make a difference in the work in Bangladesh.

]]> http://www.wrcanada.org/news/from-the-fields/a-note-from-the-field CIDA Study Shows WRC Microfinance A Success Dave Clubine Jan. 4, 2010 Like many other aid agencies, World Relief Canada has embraced microfinance. As part of our organization's accountability to our clients in the field (those hardworking entrepreneurs), our partner organizations and our donors, we are evaluated by external groups to determine if our microfinance programs are as effective as they can possibly be.

The most recent 2009 evaluation by Goss Gilroy Management Consultants, on behalf of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), determined that World Relief is on the right track with microfinance initiatives.

CIDA has encouraged our continued growth in this area because microfinance targets most — if not all — of the Millennium Development Goals, most specifically because of its positive results in private sector development, poverty reduction, health, education and the pursuit of gender equality.

The external review of World Relief Canada microfinance initiatives also confirmed that our emphasis on building up the capacity of local partners to provide microfinance in their own contexts is appropriate and effective. Our partners on the ground are able to respond to the needs of their local populations, most often women, for alternative banking structures.

World Relief Canada's partners also had an opportunity to offer their feedback to the report, which was invaluable for the Canadian office. Our partners shared that they felt continually supported by World Relief Canada and were able to access WRC's expertise on a regular basis as they developed as an organization and as a loan-lender to the poor.

Partners reported that they received their funding from WRC on a regular basis, obviously critical to the loan process. The success of high-level partnerships, particularly with World Relief U.S. in Africa, creating microfinance initiatives in post-war countries was especially noted and affirmed by the report.

CIDA's evaluations confirm to us what we already know: microfinance is one of the most effective and sustainable tools for development that exist, and World Relief  Canada is doing it well.

Traditional banks will not take risks on clients without collateral, without credit, without even a bank account. WRC’s microfinance programs say “yes” to the poor when others say “no”. Our programs work with individuals and solidarity groups that co-guarantee each other’s loan.

Solidarity groups are an important link in the process. They provide accountability, support, guidance, and encouragement for loan repayment. Group members are each provided very small loans. The guarantee on each loan is strengthened by the healthy pressure members place on each other to assure that all loans are repaid on time. Because of that, microfinance loans have one of the highest repayment rates in the world. Groups also choose to bank collectively and pool precious savings, giving hard-working people the opportunity to save for the first time in their lives.

Training is provided to participants ensuring that entrepreneurs are not left alone to struggle with the dynamics of building a business. They are treated with respect, and as the business partners that they are.

Microfinance accomplishes what traditional aid programs cannot. Access to small loans and training can shatter the cycle of poverty in a way that few other programs can. It is, by its very nature, a long-term response to long-standing issues of inequality, inaccessibility and the inertia of poverty and oppression.

The creation of successful small businesses generating on-going income for a family testifies to the strength of microfinance. The ripple effect as one woman, one business, one family, one village and one country grow stronger is immeasurable. In the end, the greatest indicator of the success of microfinance are the changed lives of the hard-working entrepreneurs around the world.

What is Microfinance?


Microfinance is a leader in changing the lives of poor people all around the world. This simple but effective model of development combines tried and true economic principles with the entrepreneurial spirit of the working poor.

Most of the world’s poor — including a disproportionate amount of women — are marginalized by the traditional banking model in their own country. They own no collateral. They have no credit. And so they do not have a chance to obtain a loan to enable them to build a business.

What they have in abundance are solid business ideas borne from their knowledge of their communities and its needs. They have the passion and drive to improve their own lives, to provide for their children and to create stronger communities.

Like any successful entrepreneur, they are hungry for success and can visualize a future that is much better than their current reality.
By its very nature, microfinance has a ripple effect: the entrepreneur builds a business that improves the life of their own family, and hires other community members to provide a much-needed product or service.

Sound and sustainable small businesses are being built around the world because small, collateral-free loans are now available to the poor. Microfinance empowers entrepreneurs to change their own lives with the determination they already have — and with the dignity they deserve.

Meet Martha



Life is much better these days for Martha Andrews. The busy mother was the only member of her family providing for the needs of her family. The odds were stacked high against her in her home country of Liberia, in West Africa. No matter how hard Martha worked, it seemed impossible for her to meet her family's needs, let alone get ahead.

Then she heard about LEAP, World Relief Canada's partner in providing microfinance loans to the poor in Liberia. Martha applied to join a solidarity group. She received her first small loan. Today, Martha runs a successful store selling plastic products like buckets and dishes to her community. Successive loans enabled her to gradually increase her inventory and her profits. Martha is one of over 12,000 entrepreneurs who have received loans from LEAP in a country that has been challenged by repeated civil conflict.

The next year will be an important one for LEAP as World Relief Canada works closely with them to strengthen their management and infrastructure and expand their loan capacity to serve 18,000 clients, each one a hard-working entrepreneur like Martha Andrews. Your donation can help make a difference for families like Martha's in Liberia.

Meet Yon




Where does a Cambodian man with a grade 10 education go for a loan when his family is in need? Yon is 31 and the father of two young boys. He runs a shoe-shine stand outside of a store in Prey Veng Province in Cambodia. Desperate for funds to help pay for medicine for his young son, Yon took out a loan from CREDIT, World Relief's microfinance program in Cambodia. CREDIT was his only option — and it turned out to be an excellent choice for Yon. He was able to repay his loan. That experience with credit gave Yon the courage to apply for a larger loan, this time to help his mother start a small business buying and selling food in the local market.

Yon's entire family has benefitted as more income flows into the family. As of today's date, Yon has almost repaid that second loan. Another is on the horizon for this determined father as he plans much-needed home repairs and expansion. World Relief Canada and CREDIT plan to reach even more entrepreneurs like Yon over the next 12 months. CREDIT will become even more competitive with its loans and a more sustainable microfinance provider as its own infrastructure grows. CREDIT will offer loans to 37,000 clients — the poorest of the poor with nowhere else to turn, like Yon used to be. You can help be a part of the solution by making a donation to CREDIT Cambodia.

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