Microfinance stands as one of the most promising and cost-effective tools in the fight against global poverty.

Making loans and fighting poverty are normally two of the least glamorous pursuits around, but put the two together and you have an economic innovation that has become not just popular but downright chic. The innovation – microfinance – involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries.

Microfinance is an incredibly powerful tool, but we must move beyond micro-hopes and micro-ambitions for women. Sometimes you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. If you give a woman microcredit, she, her husband, her children, and her extended family will eat for a lifetime. The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them! So, I believe in women’s empowerment!