WHAT IS MICROFINANCE?

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) help the poor transform their entrepreneurial enterprises into self-sustaining businesses by providing them with investment capital, financial information and other services including savings and health insurance. The following client success story illustrates the transformative role that WWB network institutions can play in the lives of poor but hardworking women entrepreneurs.

Dendev is just one of millions of borrowers around the globe whose lives have been transformed by access to credit from one of the microfinance institutions in the WWB Network. The world over, poor women like Dendev eke out a living as best they can — selling something, making something or providing a service — but lack capital to expand and improve their businesses, and have no access to credit through the traditional banking system. Without credit to grow their businesses, the poor and their families remain in poverty with little possibility of escape. Providing access to microfinance services is a means of ending the marginalization of the poor, including them in the mainstream of society, encouraging responsibility and promoting economic activity. Dendev's story illustrates the positive transformative changes that can occur when poor entrepreneurs are given access to small amounts of business capital.

Business credit enables poor entrepreneurs to plan ahead, to make smart business decisions, take advantage of opportunities and make the most of their own talents and resources while offering employment to others. Today, more and more commercial banks, as well as non-profit organizations, are discovering that the poor are bankable, reliable clients, and that offering them financial services can help them lift themselves out of poverty and transform entire communities.