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Do you want to change the world? You're in the right place! Join us at W4 in empowering girls and women for the benefit of everyone! You can donate to our projects around the world, launch your own team fundraiser, (e-)volunteer your skills and/or spread the word about our work!

How does it work?

Choose one or more projects you care about from our portfolio of projects around the world, make a donation and see the life-changing, even life-saving, impact of your giving!

How does it work?

Create your own uber-cool fundraising team to raise funds for (a) project(s) you care about, then invite your friends/colleagues/family to donate and change the world with you! Multiply the good and multiply your impact!

How do gift cards work?

Offer a friend/colleague/loved one a unique, unforgettable gift with a W4 gift card! When you offer a W4 gift card, the recipient of your gift can choose a project to support from among our many girls' & women's empowerment projects around the world. The recipient of your gift card will receive updates throughout the year about the project, as well as W4 "goodies" relating to the project. So offer a W4 gift card today and spread joy & love!

Microfinance is a powerful tool in the fight against poverty

HOW THE SMALLEST LOAN CAN MAKE THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE
 
Sufia Begum was a single mother living in absolute poverty in Bangladesh in the 1970s. Working ravagingly long days, weaving bamboo stools, Sufia was barely able to survive and provide for her three children—until someone made her a small loan, which enabled her to strengthen her small business and allowed her to work her way towards self-sufficiency.
 
The amount of Sufia’s loan was $27. Twenty-seven dollars. It was granted to Sufia by Muhammad Yunus, who founded Grameen Bank and, in 2006, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microfinance.

In the wake of “the microfinance revolution”, inspirational stories like Sufia’s now abound.

What is Microfinance?

Microfinance is the provision of financial services, such as microcredit loans, savings and micro-insurance, to very poor people who would not otherwise have access to formal banking services. Small, non-collateralized microcredit loans enable impoverished women to create and build sustainable livelihoods, earning an income for themselves and their families.

Microfinance has proven to be a powerful tool in the fight against poverty.

Microfinance services have been predominantly oriented towards women. This is in part because the majority of the world’s most poor people are women. It is also because lending to women has proven particularly effective and successful.  

Microfinance is a powerful key tool in the fight against poverty and W4 passionately supports grassroots microfinance initiatives aimed at helping poor women to become more self-sufficient.

The Women’s Worldwide Web is dedicated to advancing the efforts of organizations that:

  1. are helping ultra-poor women through microfinance aimed primarily at alleviating poverty and empowering women—and are offering the most favourable interest rates, terms and conditions for ultrapoor women;
  2. are harnessing microfinance within a holistic, integrated approach to women’s empowerment: providing in addition, other crucial, complementary capacity-building services, such as business-literacy training, health education, gender and women’s rights awareness training, and mentoring, all of which help to optimize the impact of microfinance.

These organizations are doing extraordinary work. But funding constraints stand in the way of them doing more. 

How you can help: the gift that keeps on giving…

Fund a microloan and help catalyze the entrepreneurial creativity of women around the world. Your microfinance donation can enable a woman to purchase vital capital equipment (tools and materials) to set up an income-generating business and/or grow a small business.

Funding a microfinance loan for a woman can have a powerful impact: it’s a gift that keeps on giving because, once the loan is repaid, the funds can be recycled for another loan—setting a virtuous cycle in motion.

Together, let’s end poverty and help women to build better lives for themselves and their families.