Many success stories in which micro credit has contributed to a drastic change in the lives of people were presented at a four-day regional conference held in Amman recently.
The conference was inaugurated by Queen Rania and Prince Talal ibn Abdul Aziz, president of the Arab Gulf Program for UN Development Organizations (AGFUND) and organized in association with the Jordanian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation.
The objectives of the conference concentrated on poverty combating in the Middle East and Africa through the spread of a micro credit culture, especially with regard to making credit available to poor women to help and enable them play a greater and more effective role in development within their own families and communities.
The conference also aimed to reach the poorest of the poor and establishing institutions for micro credit that would be self-sufficient. Besides, it aimed to achieve a positive, measurable, concrete and sustainable effect on the life of the poor and their families.
The event took place as a step within the context of many measures taken, starting with the micro credit summit conference held in Washington in 1997 and attended by 2,900 participants from 137 countries.
Following the summit, a campaign for nine years was launched for the purpose of reaching 100 million families among the most poor from all over the world by the end of 2005 and to provide loans for them to enable them secure for themselves self-employment, in addition to providing them with other services related to work and financial management of small projects.
At the end of 2002, some 2,572 organizations working in the field of micro credit declared that they reached 67.6 million individuals among the poor. These results came as part of a comprehensive plan aiming at halving poverty worldwide by 2015.
Prince Talal announced a new initiative for establishing an Arab fund for micro credit, which aimed to activate the mechanisms required for this type of micro credit in the Arab and Africa regions.
In his inaugural speech, he said he was still dreaming of the spread of banks for the poor in the Arab world and Africa and of these banks receiving great support from governments and financing institutions. “Experience in this area represents a unique and distinctive initiative,” he said, adding that the scene still needs more initiatives that are based on the culture of micro credit as a replacement of temporary aids that are often of limited impact.
The conclusion of the conference coincided with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan during which many people remember the poor and share them their year-long suffering, manifested in hunger and the loss of many of life’s necessities. During daytime in the fasting month, all abstain from food until sunset. However, after sunset, most people would enjoy all types of tasty food and sweets, whereas many of the poor could not find, throughout the entire year, enough food to sustain them. They sleep suffering from hunger and wake up suffering from hunger in a place that is deprived of many of life’s necessities.
The conference presented many of the success stories in which micro credit contributed to a drastic change in the lives of those people and made them distinguished ones who are proud of themselves and their work and have in their heart a sense of importance.
Professor Mohammed Yunus, pioneer of this experiment, started 30 years ago with $27. This experiment developed over the years and the number of loans extended to the poor by Grameen Bank has grown to $3.75 billion.
Besides, the poor who used to borrow from Grameen Bank became its shareholders, of whom 95 people are women. The number of scholarships given by Grameen Bank to the children of these poor people totaled 6,500.
Balquis Rafiq, a woman who has four children and lives in Lahore, Pakistan, says she has been in the habit of constantly thinking of what would she present to her children for food and that she would often leave them to sleep with empty stomachs without any supper. With the first loan of $72 she got, she invested in purchasing kitchenware for her private project for the preparation of pastries. Her husband helped her at the beginning. Then she was able to recruit two part-time women for an average of two hours a day. In the first month, her profits amounted to $90. She continued her activities through gradation in the size of loans received, where the second loan amounted to $108, the third $180 and then $360 until she reached a level of self-sufficiency and stopped borrowing. She was able to educate her children in schools and to even buy a piece of land on which she also erected a home. There are millions of such success stories, which micro credit campaigns helped to realize.
The existing poverty cannot be overcome by mere financial aids, gifts and services. These are given to the poor seasonally without the poor having to work. We should instill in these poor people that they are part of the society in which they live and that they have the capabilities and potentials that qualify them to provide something to their society and that they have to move.
(Ibrahim Muhammad Badawood is senior general manager of Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) Community Services Programs.)
