Microfinance and markets
What would you do if a bank refused to take you on?
Adrimansyah's farm was wiped out in the tsunami but working with CARE he hopes to sell organic cocoa from his small communal farm to producers in Europe
© CARE 2005
Without access to basic financial services, like insurance, loans and interest-earning savings, how would you save for the future? How would you grow your business or borrow for a home or even insure yourself against disaster?
Like millions of the world’s poorest, you would be left vulnerable, struggling in hard times, with little chance of improving your life.
CARE has an unprecedented track record helping poor communities find sustainable ways of earning a decent living.
We provide basic financial services to millions of the world’s poorest people and help develop and open new markets for them to sell their products in.
Our services help the poorest earn a decent living, grow their businesses and create new jobs. This allows them to get better food, clean water, health care, education and the ability to survive emergencies – pulling whole communities out of poverty.
Our market development initiatives fuel economic growth. We help develop and improve their products and help them using new technology. We also help small producers collaborate - by joining forces they can fulfil bigger, more reliable orders, and buy and sell in new markets that would otherwise be out of their reach.
Small businesses changing lives in the West Bank
Trying to make ends meet in the West Bank is a daily battle, with spiralling costs, diminishing incomes, road blockades cutting off access to fields and markets and a worsening water shortage. More than half of all families in the Palestinian territories are cutting back on food.
Business boost to beat poverty in Peru
Imagine the impact a fivefold increase in sales has had on the lives of farmers in some of the most remote and poorest parts of the Andes mountains in Peru.
Kick-starting a cinema business
Jane Okomo is in the movie business. This confident young businesswoman has started her own cinema, thanks to a loan from the small savings and loans group CARE started in her village.
Organic chocolate buys a future for tsunami survivors
On the island of Simeulue in Indonesia, one of the areas worst-hit by the tsunami, crops were destroyed and fields salinated, leaving many unusable.
What we do
