Kiva.org Attends the Global Microcredit Summit

Kiva.org today attended the first day of the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia. More than 2,300 delegates from over 100 countries are participating at the event, to assess progress toward the Summit's goal of reaching 100 million poorest, and to launch the second phase of the Campaign with two new goals.

The Microcredit Summit Campaign recently released the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report for 2006, which reported that "As of December 31, 2005, 3,133 microcredit institutions have reported reaching 113,261,390 clients, 81,949,036 of whom were among the poorest when they took their first loan. Assuming five persons per family, the 81.9 million poorest clients reached by the end of 2005 affected some 410 million family members."

The 2006 Global Microcredit Summit today launched the second phase of the Campaign with two new goals: 1. Working to ensure that 175 million of the world's poorest families, especially the women of those families, are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2015.

2. Working to ensure that 100 million of the world's poorest families move from below US$1 a day adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) to above US $1 a day adjusted for PPP, by the end of 2015. Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus, speaking today in the opening ceremony of the Summit, emphasized the purpose of the international gathering: "this Summit is about creating a process which will send poverty where it belongs - the museums."

Kiva.org is proud to be attending this historic event as a new initiative to connect people across the globe via the internet, through micro-credit. Summit organizer Sam Daley-Harris noted at the opening ceremony that "Succeeding will require renewed effort and some new players", and Kiva.org hopes to play a part in both.