[US] Davis microcredit program wins $6M Gates grant

From The Sacramento Business Journal

Freedom from Hunger, a Davis-based nonprofit that makes tiny loans to women around the world so they can set up or expand home-based businesses, has been awarded a four-year, $6 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to add new health services to its offerings.

The grant will go to build the nonprofit's "Credit with Education" program, which the group said serves nearly 400,000 women in Asia, Africa and Latin America, most of them living on $1 a day or less. The program offers loans of as little as $20 for working capital in their home businesses, allowing them a chance at self-reliance and to save money.

Over the years, the recipients have repaid nearly everything they borrowed, plus interest -- a total of more than $380 million -- and have saved some $11 million to support their families.

The program holds weekly meetings where the women make payments, deposit savings and receive education on disease prevention, nutrition, family planning and business management.

The Gates grant will allow the group to add a prepaid healthcare "micro-insurance" program where they pay a small fixed fee in advance to a clinic, encouraging them to seek care immediately for health problems in themselves or their children, rather than delaying because they can't pay until the problem has become more serious.

The Gates Foundation "recognizes that poor health is a major cause as well as a consequence of poverty," said Christopher Dunford, president of Freedom from Hunger, in a prepared statement. "With small loans, a safe way to save, basic life skills training and access to health services, even the poorest families become hopeful about their futures."

The program enhancements will be offered in West Africa, South America and Asia.

The Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, has an endowment of nearly $29 billion. Created in 2000 through the merger of two other philanthropic groups backed by Microsoft executive Bill Gates, it focuses on issues of education, technology access, poverty and global health equity.