Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, or a verifiable credit history. It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled US$38 billion. Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent.
Microfinance is a category of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems. Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually poorer population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient.
Youth empowerment is a process where children and young people are encouraged to take charge of their lives. They do this by addressing their situation and then take action in order to improve their access to resources and transform their consciousness through their beliefs, values, and attitudes. Youth empowerment aims to improve quality of life. Youth empowerment is achieved through participation in youth empowerment programs. However scholars argue that children’s rights implementation should go beyond learning about formal rights and procedures to give birth to a concrete experience of rights. There are numerous models that youth empowerment programs use that help youth achieve empowerment. A variety of youth empowerment initiatives are underway around the world. These programs can be through non-profit organizations, government organizations, schools or private organizations.
Population Matters, formerly known as the Optimum Population Trust, is a UK-based charity that addresses population size and its effects on environmental sustainability. It considers population growth as a major contributor to climate change, environmental degradation, and resource depletion. The group promotes ethical, choice-based solutions through lobbying, campaigning and awareness-raising.
The Global Young Greens (GYG) is an emerging global organisation supporting and consolidating the efforts of young people working towards social justice, ecological sustainability, grassroots democracy and peace. GYG is a joint project of over 70 youth organisations and many hundreds of individuals, including the Federation of Young European Greens, Asia Pacific Young Greens Network, Cooperation and Development Network Eastern Europe, Young Volunteers for the Environment and others. GYG is a non-profit organisation under Belgian law.
Sustainability is the ability to exist constantly. In the 21st century, it refers generally to the capacity for the biosphere and human civilization to coexist. It is also defined as the process of people maintaining change in a homeostasis balanced environment, in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. For many in the field, sustainability is defined through the following interconnected domains or pillars: environment, economic and social, which according to Fritjof Capra is based on the principles of Systems Thinking. Sub-domains of sustainable development have been considered also: cultural, technological and political. According to Our Common Future, Sustainable development is defined as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Sustainable development may be the organizing principle of sustainability, yet others may view the two terms as paradoxical.
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is an Indian American economist who is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Banerjee shared the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty". Along with Esther Duflo, they are the sixth married couple to jointly win a Nobel Prize.
EduCARE India stands for 'Education & Community Applied Research Establishment in India', a community development institutional organisation that has been working with local communities and young talented students from higher education institutions / universities such as Panjab University, Chandigarh and Central University of Himachal Pradesh and other international universities to conduct community based education and applied research, organisation of seminars, conferences, exhibitions and an international internship and exchange program along with AIESEC
The UK Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC) is a non-profit youth organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation is run entirely by unpaid volunteers, who are all aged 18 to 29.
UYDO was a youth-led charity which focuses on empowering young people in the developing world to take themselves out of unemployment and poverty through entrepreneurship.
International Co-operative Day is an annual celebration of the co-operative movement observed on the first Saturday in July since 1923 by the International Co-operative Alliance.
Tzedek is a UK-based registered charity organisation which aims to provide a Jewish response to the problem of extreme global poverty. Registered as a charity in 1993, Tzedek has a number of overseas development programmes, working closely with local NGOs to alleviate extreme poverty in Northern Ghana and Northeast & Southeast India. As well as supporting local NGOs within these regions, Tzedek aims to develop the leadership skills of young Jewish leaders within the community to provide a long-term, sustainable solution to global poverty.
The University of Birmingham Financial Forum is a student-run conference for hundreds of students that was founded in 2011 and held at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
The impact of microcredit is a subject of much controversy. Proponents state that it reduces poverty through higher employment and higher incomes. This is expected to lead to improved nutrition and improved education of the borrowers' children. Some argue that microcredit empowers women. In the US and Canada, it is argued that microcredit helps recipients to graduate from welfare programs. Critics say that microcredit has not increased incomes, but has driven poor households into a debt trap, in some cases even leading to suicide. They add that the money from loans is often used for durable consumer goods or consumption instead of being used for productive investments, that it fails to empower women, and that it has not improved health or education.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a collection of 17 global goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all". The SDGs, set in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and intended to be achieved by the year 2030, are part of UN Resolution 70/1, the 2030 Agenda.
The London Economics Symposium is an international economics and politics conference, organised by students for students, and held annually in London, United Kingdom. The London Economics Symposium is independent from any university, and is organised by students throughout Europe. The London Economics Symposium provides a forum for students, academics and prominent leaders to discuss contemporary socioeconomic and political issues.
Naila Kabeer is an Indian-born British Bangladeshi social economist, research fellow and writer. She is also the president elect of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), her tenure will be 2018 to 2019. She works primarily on poverty, gender and social policy issues. Her research interests include gender, poverty, social exclusion, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection, focussed on South and South East Asia.
Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien Ph.D is a Nigerian social entrepreneur and corporate sustainability and responsibility (CSR) expert and Bottom of the Pyramid empowerment advocate. She is the Founder and President of the Growing Businesses Foundation, Nigeria's largest Bottom of the Pyramid platform which has been managing CSR Projects for multinational corporations. Her status as a social entrepreneur has been recognized by the Bertelsmann AG to whom she is affiliated as a Reinhard Mohn Fellow.
Meri Toksave is a youth-led, non-profit, non-governmental organisation that designs and delivers programmes and partnerships for the promotion and protection of human rights, the empowerment of women and girls, the advancement of gender equality, and the prevention and elimination of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea.
Women's empowerment is a movement involving respect, honor and recognition toward all Women. Empowerment can be defined in many ways, however, when talking about women's empowerment, empowerment means accepting and allowing people (women) who are on the outside of the decision-making process into it. “This puts a strong emphasis on participation in political structures and formal decision-making and, in the economic sphere, on the ability to obtain an income that enables participation in economic decision-making.” Empowerment is the process that creates power in individuals over their own lives, society, and in their communities. People are empowered when they are able to access the opportunities available to them without limitations and restrictions such as in education, profession and lifestyle. Feeling entitled to make your own decisions creates a sense of empowerment. Empowerment includes the action of raising the status of women through education, raising awareness, literacy, and training. Women's empowerment is all about equipping and allowing women to make life-determining decisions through the different problems in society.
