August 2005

Dear Friends,

We live in the midst of a global scandal in which 1.2 billion people live on less than USD $1 a day, more than 100 million children of primary school age are not in school, and some 29, 000 children under the age of five die each day from largely preventable malnutrition and disease.

In his foreword to Professor Jeffrey Sach's book, The End of Poverty, Irish rock star Bono writes about the thousands of deaths each day in Africa from “preventable, treatable diseases.”

”Future generations…will know whether we answered the key question…History will be our judge, but what’s written is up to us… We can’t say our generation didn’t know how to do it.  We can’t say our generation couldn’t afford to do it.  And we can’t say our generation didn’t have reason to do it.  It’s up to us.”

In response to this global crisis, more than 2900 delegates from over 137 countries gathered in Washington, D.C. in February 1997 for the first Microcredit Summit ¹. There we launched a nine year campaign to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest families ², especially the women of those families, with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2005.

From November 12-15, 2006, 2,000 delegates from more than 100 countries will gather in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for the Global Microcredit Summit, to assess progress toward the Summit’s goal of reaching 100 million poorest, and to launch the second phase of the Campaign with two new goals:

1. Working to ensure that 175 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2015.  (With an average of five in a family this would affect 875 million family members. )

2. Working to ensure that 100 million of the world’s poorest families move from below US$1 a day adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) to above US $1 a day adjusted for PPP, by the end of 2015.  (With an average of five per family this would mean that 500 million people would have risen above $1 a day nearly completing the Millennium Development Goal on halving absolute poverty.)

I urge you to come to Halifax and join the top leaders in the fight to end global poverty.  I promise you will be surrounded by your fellow visionaries in action.

Sincerely,



Sam Daley–Harris, Director
Microcredit Summit Campaign


1. Any reference to Microcredit should be understood to refer to programs that provide credit for self-employment and other financial and business services (including savings and technical assistance) to very poor persons.
2. The Microcredit Summit Campaign defines poorest as those who are in the bottom half of those living below their nation’s poverty line, or any of the 1.2 billion who live on less than 1 USD a day adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), when they started with a program.  The Campaigns’ greatest challenge lies in bridging the gap between its commitment to reaching the poorest and the lack of a sufficient number of effective poverty measurement tools in use.  Therefore, every mention of the term ‘poorest’ should be read within the context of this dilemma.