A call for more support for credit union-type loans for people in developing countries will be made at a conference organised by Concern in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, this morning.
This year has been designated as the Year of Microfinance by the United Nations in an effort to raise awareness of the concept. Microfinance involves the supply of loans and other basic financial services to the poor to help them start businesses.
Concern and its partners have provided these loans to more than 100,000 people in places such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Haiti. The schemes also involve training and savings advice.
Speakers at today's conference will call on policy makers and donors to support this concept, particularly in the aftermath of the tsunami.
Dr Geetha Nagarajan, a consultant on microfinance, will say that Sri Lanka has been hit by the "double whammy" of the tsunami and civil conflict. She will say there is a huge demand for microfinance in Sri Lanka, and that well-prepared projects could greatly benefit poor entrepreneurs once markets begin to resume.
Yesterday Isabelle Kidney, microfinance adviser for Concern, said the aid agency was focusing on income generation and house reconstruction in Sri Lanka.
"There is still a lot of work to be done in Indonesia and we are still providing emergency relief there," she said.
Ms Kidney said microfinance would help to meet the UN's millennium development goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.
She said it was particularly important to women, as more than 80 per cent of Concern's microfinance clients were women who were taking out loans to start small businesses.
