The Executive Director of Micro Credit Summit Campaign (MSC), Larry Reid, has underscored the initiatives of the Arab Gulf Program for Development (AGFUND) with special reference to establish banks for the poor in the region, describing it as "the signs featured anti-poverty” in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Reid made his observation during a meeting with Prince Talal, AGFUND president, recently, citing his continuous support to the campaign during its world summits organized by the MSC in Manila.

At the meeting, the two organizations discussed the proposed qualitative support to be provided by AGFUND to the upcoming MSC’s conference in Manila, Philippines in October, under the title "International Coalition Against Poverty."

According to an AGFUND source, the summit will be focusing on the access of the poor to financial services and strengthen the movement prudent in lending institutions and civil society working in this area.

The official visited AGFUND this week during which he met with the Executive Director Nasser Bakr Al-Kahtani and discussed a new partnership framework between the two organizations so as to enhance development strategy and fighting poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The micro credit summit is an international alliance initiated (by global micro credit campaign) in 1997, and the first conference was held in the same year in Washington, with partnership of AGFUND.

AGFUND and MSC collaborated in establishing the regional conference of micro credit in the Middle East and North Africa in Amman, Jordan in 2004, which was inaugurated by Prince Talal, and Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, which was the most successful conference that specializes in micro credit at the level of the Arab countries and was attended by more than 800 participants .

He also met with AGFUND's staff and the technical supervisors for the banks for the poor. During the meeting, a presentation on AGFUND development history, focused on orientations in the poverty fighting and AGFUND strategy in the application of the mechanism of micro finance, as well as the definition of the eight micro finance banks which was founded in partnership with the private sector in Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Palestine.

Over the phone from Yemen, the executive director of the Al-Amal Bank for micro credit, Muhammad Lai, briefed the meeting on the Al-Amal Bank and its experience in the application of micro finance, product development, training, and the growing number of clients, as well as plans for the bank's future expansion in rural areas of Yemen.

At the meeting, Reid highlighted some experiments of his organization with reference to poverty fighting. Reid welcomed developing cooperation with AGFUND and also expressed promoting AGFUND Prize at the summit world, especially with the trend to link the prize subject with micro finance and poverty reduction. AGFUND has allocated "combat the phenomenon of street children" as this year's award theme.