During the summit the microfinance institutions undertook to lift one hundred million families out of extreme poverty.
With the theme “The Next Generation: Innovations in Microfinance”, the Microcredit Summit Campaign hosted the 17th World Microcredit Summit in Mérida (Yucatan). It was attended by delegates from several countries, and served as a forum for reflecting on the challenges and opportunities raised by the growth and transformation of the sector, particularly through improvements and practical innovations to speed up the advances along the road to total financial inclusion.
The Dominican microfinance banking sector was represented at the international meeting by Mercedes Canalda de Beras-Goico, executive president of Banco ADOPEM, who participated as a speaker in the sections entitled “Cultivating the next generation of leaders” and “Up-scaling: savings groups, conditioned monetary transfers and financial inclusion”.
Canalda de Beras-Goico was a panel member in the workshop entitled “Microfinance and Microfranchises: how microfinance and microdistribution networks can innovate in the fight against poverty”. She was also on the panel for “The most serious problems of overindebtedness” and “Developing Savings Groups”, and took part in the opening plenary session under the heading “The new generation of leaders in microfinance”.
The Microcredit Summit Campaign highlighted the role of Banco ADOPEM as one of its most important allies, thanks to its vocation to reach out to the poorest and most excluded customers in the Dominican Republic and make sure they have access to the products they need to emerge from poverty.
Microcredit Summit Campaign
The Microcredit Summit Campaign launched a new project focusing on its second goal, aimed at lifting 100 million of the world’s poorest families out of extreme poverty.
The Campaign is an American non-profit institution that has set up a global alliance of organizations (including microfinance institutions and networks and non-governmental organizations, among others) to work together to identify the poorest sectors and develop products and services to help these families cross the threshold of absolute poverty.
The Campaign’s activity was designed to promote efforts to bring together professionals in the world of microcredits, civil rights, educational institutions, donor agencies, international financial institutions, non-governmental organizations and other bodies dealing in microcredit, all with the common goal of relieving world poverty through microfinance, in addition to promoting best practices within the sector, stimulating the exchange of knowledge and working to achieve the objectives.
The global movement towards financial inclusion embodied by the Microcredit Summit Campaignaims to guarantee access to the services necessary for managing cash flows and protecting against financial shocks. The institution’s further goal for 2015 is to reach out to 175 million of the world’s poorest people with microfinance and financial products and services that are useful in lifting them out of poverty.
The coalition’s allies work in two key areas. The first is the promotion of a more widespread use of reliable and precise tools for measuring poverty and monitoring progress. And in second place, they provide practices designed to raise people out of poverty by sharing effective experiences, innovative products and services, and strategies that reinforce alliances between the sectors, creating improved forms of service for poorer customers and offering assistance that is tailor-made to their needs.