Microfinance and Enterprise Development: Effective Tools to Eradicate Poverty? (Discussion Summary and Transcript)

This is the Summary and Discussion Transcript for Speakers Corner #28: Microfinance and Enterprise Development: Effective Tools to Eradicate Poverty?

According to the 2007 Millennium Development Goals Report, 980 million people are still living on less than US$ 1 a day. Since its early beginning, microfinance has aimed to make a significant contribution to poverty eradication, resulting in ambitious goals for poverty outreach and eradication such as those recently adopted by the Microcredit Summit Campaign in 2006—reaching 175 million of the world’s poorest families and ensuring that 100 million rise above the US$1 a day—or the U.S. Congress’ mandate that one-half of all USAID microenterprise development funds must benefit "very poor" people.

This Speakers Corner discussed a study by the SEEP Network Poverty Outreach Working Group (POWG) that showed that half of their programs were measuring the absolute poverty levels of their clients in relation to an existing poverty line. And for the programs that did measure, it was found that only about one third or fewer of their clients were determined to be very poor.