INTERNATIONAL FUND FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Did you know that...• Over a billion human beings still live in absolute poverty and the majority of these live in rural areas -- smallholder farmers, poor herders, fishermen and the landless. Sadly, women account for a growing proportion of the total.
• Even the poorest of the poor can make effective use of small loans -- as little as $50 can help set a poor woman or man on the road to food security.
• The poor can use credit and other support not only to raise their incomes but also in ways that protect the fields and forests on which their lives depend.
• Poor people, especially women, often repay loans more diligently than the better-off. Loan repayment levels in IFAD projects by poor borrowers, especially women, often exceed 90 per cent.
• Over its 20 years of operations, IFAD through micro-credit programmes has reached some 60 million rural poor.My own vegetables
Ibu Nurlaela is 29 years old. She lives in Mulayasari, district of Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. She is a member of one the 48000 self-help groups established by IFAD financed "P4K" Income Generating Project for Marginal Farmers and Landless. She has received a first loan of Rp75000 (about $32) and, once repaid, a second of Rp 150000 ($64).
"We have no land. Before, I sold vegetables in the market which were not mine. My husband worked as bajah (pedal cab) driver in Jakarta. Our life was hard. I am happy being a member of my group because, now, I have access to the bank via my group and I have my own capital to sell vegetables in the market. I get more profit. I can pay my children's school. My house is better and we have enough rice. I wish I could have my own shop in the market. I am saving money for that."
to him by the Association, he grows onions and sometimes tomatoes.
Grouping together to manage water John Aseta is 62. For twenty years, he used to work during the dry season as a labourer in Tema, a port city near Accra. When the IFAD-financed Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project in Upper East Ghana developed a Water Users' Association in his village of Kamega in the district of West Bawku, he joined in. On the irrigated plot allotted
"The benefit I have derived from the Association and from my plot over the past three years is more than my twenty years in Tema. Now, if I have no grain when rain crops fail I have money to buy food. Even if today part of my farm land has been planted with trees to protect the dam, I value the dam more and I have advised my children to take irrigation seriously for their own future."
IFAD in brief
• IFAD was established in 1977, as an international financial institution, the major outcome of the 1974 World Food Conference. IFAD's mission has been to bring to the rural poor the tools to help them work their way out of poverty and hunger.
• In its 20 years of operations, IFAD has provided loans and grants of over $5 billion to help finance projects in 112 countries whose total cost is about $16.4 billion. On full development these projects will help some 200 million people overcome poverty and build sustainable livelihoods.International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
107, Via del Serafico
Rome 00142
Italy
Tel.: (39-6) 545591
Website: http://www.unicc.org/ifad/home.html
E:mail: WebadminaIFAD.ORG
