Moving 100 Million Families Out of Severe Poverty: How Can We Do It?

This paper calls on microfinance leaders to build on the credibility they have established, to provide leadership in drawing together the institutions and resources that will be necessary to bring all families out of severe poverty.It proposes a ten-year campaign to move 100 million families sustainably out of poverty by 2020 and actions to implement this vision. They include:

• Microcredit Summit Campaign should organize a forum that brings opposing camps to work together to work for the common good;
• Microfinance industry should set standards for client protection, social performance, and poverty alleviation , through the Microenterprise Coalition;
• Microcredit Summit Campaign and Microenterprise Coalition should organize forums for government leaders to develop regulatory policies for consumer and practitioner protection;
• Microenterprise Coalition should take the lead in creating industry-wide standards for transparency and accountability;
• MFIs should be encouraged to create programs to identify, attract, and assist the poorest clients;
• Microfinance industry should embrace microfranchising and employment training organizations to help microcredit borrowers and their children move out of poverty into productive employment;
• There should be a renewed emphasis on the use of poverty measurement tools.