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MicroCredit Enterprises Reaches Key Milestone with Approval of 20,000 Total Microloans to Poor Women

MicroCredit Enterprises Reaches Key Milestone with Approval of 20,000 Total Microloans to Poor Women

Published 06-29-06

Submitted by Microcredit Enterprises

DAVIS, Calif.,- MicroCredit Enterprises, a not-for-profit venture that makes Guarantor-backed small business loans to aid third-world poor, today announced that with its most recent board vote the organization has now provided loans to 20,000 impoverished women in Cambodia, Bolivia and Ecuador. This significant milestone equates to more than $2.1 million in tiny business loans (average amount: $100.00) that fund women entrepreneurs to start home-based businesses and feed their families.

The impoverished loan recipients generally have no credit history, no collateral and no formal education. With microloans, however, they will create and build home-based businesses, generating income that allows them to take care of themselves and their families. Typical home-based businesses funded with new microloans, which can be as low as $25.00 per borrower, can include soap-making, raising animals, baking bread, making bricks and weaving. Remarkably, poor women entrepreneurs show a loan repayment rate of higher than 99 percent in well-managed microfinance programs.

"With each woman supporting on average a family a five, approximately 100,000 poor people, most of whom are children, could achieve food security through the approved loans," said Jonathan C. Lewis, MicroCredit Enterprises' CEO. "We've created this financial model to support microfinance programs, which are a proven international poverty reduction strategy, without depending on donations, foundation grants or below-market investments. "

"The MicroCredit Enterprises model is very appealing for the socially responsible business," added Lewis. "It allows corporate stakeholders to make a significant difference in the world at a grass-roots level - securing thousands of loans to women who simply want to put food on the table or clothe their children - while still maintaining complete control of their invested collateral assets and realizing a market-driven return on investment. Without making a donation, a corporation can create long-term, sustainable change."

MicroCredit Enterprises' 2006 goals include securing a total of 20 Guarantors and issuing $10 million in overseas loans. So far, the organization has recruited the participation of 13 Guarantors.

Guarantors come from the business and non-profit worlds: Freedom From Hunger; Oxfam America; Carl Kawaja with Capital World Investors; Douglas Ell with Groom Law Group; Catherine S. Muther with Three Guineas Fund; Ed Michael Reggie with Future Factory, Inc.; Barry M. Smith with Bon Travay, Inc.; Dan and Rhea Brunner, Eric McCallum and Robin Smith, Janet A. McKinley, Tom and Meg Stallard, and Maja Ramsey. Each new Guarantor supports up to 5,000 new, female-owned small businesses overseas. And, for socially-responsible corporations, opportunities exist to make fully secured and collateralized loans to MicroCredit Enterprises, which simultaneously support impoverished families and earn interest.

About MicroCredit Enterprises
Based in Davis, California, MicroCredit Enterprises is an innovative, not-for-profit, anti-poverty venture which leverages private capital to make tiny business loans to impoverished people, mostly women, in developing countries. Without raising a dime of traditional charitable donations, MicroCredit Enterprises uses the collateral assets of individuals and institutions to borrow debt capital in the United States that is channeled through overseas, locally-run, non-governmental microfinance organizations. The impoverished loan recipients generally have no credit history, no collateral and no formal education, but with microloans, they create and build home-based businesses. On the Net: www.mcenterprises.org.

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Microcredit Enterprises

Microcredit Enterprises

Established in 2005, MicroCredit Enterprises is a pioneering private sector, anti-poverty program that leverages the private capital of high net worth individuals to provide small business loans to impoverished entrepreneurs in developing countries who live on $1 per day or less. MicroCredit Enterprises gears its entrepreneurial results to produce jobs, sustain micro-businesses and improve human lives. MicroCredit Enterprises is backed by a growing network of Guarantors with a current total of $37 million in pledged assets. To date, MicroCredit Enterprises has funded 95,000 micro-entrepreneurs across 15 countries on four continents.

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