Bank Al Falah In Pakistan
Haunted by decades of war, Afghanistan is also an extremely poor country. Most Afghans suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, medical care, electricity, and jobs. Two-thirds of all people live on less than $2 a day. The average life expectancy is 43 years, the infant mortality rate very high and the country's literacy rate of 36 percent among the lowest in the world. Security remains a significant issue since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
FINCA's Village Banking Program
FINCA International (Foundation for International Community Assistance), sometimes referred to as the "World Bank for the Poor", is one of the pioneers of microfinance. It started in Bolivia in 1984, where John Hatch, a Fulbright-trained economist and the founder of FINCA , conceived a small loan program to help farmers. They could obtain loans without collateral and groups of neighbors were put in charge to collectively disburse, invest and collect loan capital.
Rebuilding Afghanistan's Infrastructure
25 years after the program's inception FINCA Afghanistan (founded in 2003) plans to reach 90,000 clients by the end of 2009. Microloans work well in Afghanistan: over 75% of the Afghan people live in rural areas where agriculture is the primary activity. Supporting small entrepreneurs is a good way to rebuild the war-torn country's infrastructure.
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