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The Foundation for Women changes lives through microcredit finance, and by encouraging entrepreneurship as the solution to eliminating poverty. Since 1997 FFW has positively impacted more than a million women---and their families--- by funding microcredit programs in India, Zambia, Niger, San Diego and Liberia. The Foundation for Women is currently the registered NGO (non-governmental organization) in San Diego and Liberia.
The San Diego Microcredit Program establishes loan groups in the poorest communities of the region, often those where refugee and immigrant women have settled. San Diego County has been designated by the California Department of Social Services as a "Refugee Impacted County" and is home to significant populations of refugees and immigrants from East Africa, Southeast Asia, South and Central America and Mexico. Through its partners (resettlement agencies), the Foundation for Women receives referrals for potential clients. FFW has opened several program centers including; El Cajon, Chula Vista , Spring Valley, City Heights and National City. More than 500 women have received loans of $250, $500 or $1000 with a reported 98% percent repayment rate.
The Foundation for Women is a registered NGO and established microcredit program for impoverished women in Liberia. It is operating 27 centers in seven counties with over 1000 women borrowers with a 98% repayment rate. FFW expects to cover the country's 15 counties by 2012.
Average first loans are $100.
In 2006, the Foundation for Women entered a funding partnership with NGO Bunkasa to provide microcredit loans to impoverished women (particularly those dealing with fistula) in Niger, the poorest country on the planet. To date, FFW has established two pilot projects in Niger; one four hours from the capital in the rural area served by our former US Ambassador and FFW Board Member, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, and the second in the capital of Niamey.
The Foundation for Women partnered with the Power of Love Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Health to provide training and microcredit loans to women caregivers who care for HIV/AIDS patients and orphaned children.
FFW helped to open dozens of microcredit banks reaching more than a million women with microcredit loans and a school for over 500 children of the borrowers.
With your help, the Microcredit Summit Campaign has been able to announce in the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2011 that more than 128 million of the world's poorest families received a microloan in 2009. That means that, assuming 5 people in a family, some 641 million family members were affected by microcredit; this is greater than the combined population of the European Union and Russia.
