What is micro credit?

In developing nations where the poverty rate is extremely
high and economic conditions sometimes unstable, microcredit is the extension of small
loans to entrepreneurs to stimulate business growth and provide opportunity for
individuals who would have no other means of starting a
business.

For example, a loan of even $200 to a woman who
wants to start a hair salon in Uzbekistan can provide a lifetime of income an stability
to the woman and her family.  She then pays back the loan in small installments, and the
money can be loaned out again to another entrepreneur somewhere else.  Kiva.org is one
such organization (a non-profit) that helps connect people willing to loan money with
entrepreneurs who need loans.

Such programs have been so
successful that more and more people in financial circles are subscribing to the
practice, knwoing that eventually it develops more markets for their own mainstream
financial services.

Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank of
Bangladesh pioneered the idea of microloans, earning him the Nobel Prize for Economics
for 2006.