Microfinance

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ACCION International is a US-based international nongovernment organization (NGO) with a mission to give people the tools they need to work their way out of poverty. ACCION International firmly believes that microfinance institutions have the potential to access the billions of dollars in the international financial markets to help the very poor people whom the formal financial system has traditionally left behind. ACCION's goal is to make this potential a reality and thereby bring microfinance facilities to millions of poor people. ACCION operates in the Latin American, Caribbean, and African regions, and assists its partner organization to become sustainable and expand their outreach. It also operates in the United States. Despite being an NGO, it works on the basic principle that there is not enough charitable money in the world and there never will be. Hence, ACCION's programs are designed to cover their own costs. The ACCION website is a gateway to a wealth of high-quality technical and operational information on various aspects of microfinance. It provides access to information on its partner organizations, speeches made by management and top-notch staff of ACCION, its various publications including the ACCION InSight series, one-topic bulletin that highlights ACCION's policy view points and ongoing research in the microfinance field.

Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) is a consortium of 29 bilateral and multilateral donor agencies who support microfinance. Its mission is to improve the capacity of microfinance institutions to deliver flexible, high-quality financial services to the poor, including the very poor, on a sustainable basis. CGAP serves microfinance institutions, donors and the microfinance industry through the development of technical tools and services, delivery of training, strategic advice and technical assistance, and action research on innovations. This site has been developed to disseminate up-to-date information including lessons learned on best practices in the field of microfinance. It has links to CGAP's occasional papers, focus notes, microfinance tools, capacity building, annual reports, working groups, selected readings and other microfinance resources. It also has a link to the Microfinance Gateway.

MicroSave is a program to promote secure, high quality savings services for poor people. Through MicroSave-Africa, a joint effort of SUM/UNDP Africa and UK's Department for International Development (DFID), a regional center of excellence has been established in Kampala, Uganda to conduct action research, develop curricula and provide technical assistance to selected MFIs on savings product development. The web site includes papers, studies, toolkits and links to other microfinance sites.

MicroInsurance Center, an initiative of MicroSave-Africa, aims to aid formal sector insurers and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing relationships to provide high quality, appropriately designed insurance products to MFI clients. The Center does this through the development of tools and documents to assist in the formation and maintenance of these "Partner-Agent" relationships. The Center also works with action research partners to ensure that its activities are focused on practical responses to the needs of both MFIs and insurers. A primary outreach tool of the MicroInsurance Center is this website. The site provides practical tools for information exchange and the advancement of ideas and action using relationships between MFIs and Insurers. It also offers relevant documents and linkages, and a forum to discuss issues. The focus is on practical ways of getting profitable, relevant, efficient, insurance services to the poor through insurer/MFI partnerships.

United Nations Capital Development Fund: Microfinance Distance Learning Program, a web-based distance-learning tool that seeks to make the instruction of microfinance more accessible. It teaches the basic knowledge necessary to develop an effective and sustainable microfinance operation. The course has a broad range of applicability, intended to be of use to both those new and experienced in the field of microfinance. The course is accessible for free, worldwide.