FINCA Village Bank Sponsorship Program

What is a Village Bank?

A Village Bank is a financial support group made up of friends, neighbors and family members who come together to guarantee each others’ small loans. These groups would otherwise lack the collateral needed to take out a loan with a commercial bank. Village Banking allows FINCA to provide financial services to the poorest of the working poor and empowers them to borrow working capital for their microenterprises.

How Can I Help?

From our first pilot projects in Latin America nearly 25 years ago to the network of Village Bank programs in 21 countries around the world today, we have depended on support from individuals who understand the need and sustainability of the “FINCA solution” that provides a hand up, not a handout, to the world’s lowest-income entrepreneurs.

As a Village Bank Sponsor, you have the rare opportunity to see the faces of the women and men you are supporting, how your funds are changing lives and how the loans cycle from one borrower to the next, growing in impact each year. In order to lift even more FINCA clients out of poverty, your support is needed now more than ever.

How Does the Sponsorship Program Work?

Generally, the Village Bank Sponsorship is available in three to four countries in the FINCA network. As of July 2011, those are: Zambia, El Salvador, Haiti and Afghanistan.

As soon as FINCA receives your generous $5,000 donation, we match you with an existing Village Bank. Your donation is sent to local FINCA programs, where our staff provides the loan to the designated Village Bank. Once the bank pays back its loan, your donation becomes part of the larger pool of local loan capital available to other clients, rotating through our system into perpetuity for further impact in the communities we serve.

Within eight weeks after making your donation, you will receive a welcome package giving you detailed information about the Village Bank you have sponsored. Six months after your gift, you will receive a package with a brief update on your Village Bank’s loan status and an affiliate report for the country in which your bank is located.

What other resources are available to me at FINCA?

As part of your participation in the sponsorship program, you will receive FINCA’s quarterly newsletter in the mail, in addition to the annual report. If you are part of a larger group, you are welcome to request more copies of any of our publications. FINCA also has PDF versions of all publications available upon request. We encourage you to sign up for our email communications at www.FINCA.org as well.

Feel free to contact Laura Brower Hagood, the Village Bank Sponsorship program administrator and your personal point of contact at FINCA, with questions at 202-682-1510 x250 or Laura.Hagood@FINCA.org.