Key messages

Microfinance contributes to the Millennium Development Goals

The Year offers an important opportunity to assess and promote the power of microfinance to change the lives of people living in poverty, and the contribution of microfinance to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) . Other important considerations:

• Through access to microfinance poor people are given options and tools to increase household incomes, build assets, safeguard against income fluctuations and stabilise consumption levels during lean times.
  
• Meeting the MDGs requires self-sustainable strategies: microfinance goes beyond just business loans, it self-finances the MDGs from the bottom up by putting money in the hands of the poor and allowing them to invest according to their own priorities: education, health, property, old age and other family assets and concerns.
  
• Microfinance builds more than assets: it contributes to the empowerment of the economically disenfranchised by increasing the options and the self-confidence of poor households and by increasing gender-equity through the greater economic participation of women.

More information: www.yearofmicrocredit.org/