November 18, 2004 , the United Nations starts its International Year of Microcredit called to support the efforts targeted to make financial services more accessible to poor and low-income people. Its aim is also to improve the public awareness of the role the microcrediting and microfinancing may play in developing and strengthening the partnership relations between the governments, donors, international organizations, NGOs, the private sector, the academic community, and clients of the sphere of microfinancing.

The agenda of the Year includes several major events. In particular, this year's World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) will become the meeting venue of the leaders and authors of business strategies aimed to promote expansion of partnership ties between the governmental and private sectors for the sake of social and economic progress. A special session of the Forum, dedicated to microfinancing and opportunities for major players in the financial market to participate in it, will give an ideal chance for the participants of the Forum to set their contacts with broad circles of business and financial communities.

Another action assumes making use of pop arts capacities in increasing the level of public awareness of the role of microfinancing. To do so, they plan to engage scriptwriters of television serials – "soap operas," so broadly popular worldwide. Since the major audience of such TV serials are people with low incomes, who are potential beneficiaries from microfinancing, the Secretariat of the Year are trying to introduce the microbusiness topicality into the scripts of Latin American TV serials and, thus, to increase the coverage of potential clients.

Today, the ring of hand bells kept in the hands of microbusinessmen at stock exchanges worldwide – from Cambodia and Indonesia throughout to Mexico and USA – has marked the start of the International Year of Microcredit. The participants of the ceremonies have been be the winners of Global Microbusiness Prizes, awarded in coordination with the Harvard Business School and other recognized educational institutions.

November 18, Minsk held a press conference dedicated to the start of the International Year of Microcredit in Belarus. Ms Cihan Sultanoglu, the UN/UNDP Representative in the Republic of Belarus, who took part in the press conference, has noted that microfinancing is a tool to stimulate economic development not only in the poorest countries of the developing world, but also in the countries with transient economies, and even in highly developed states. According to Ms Sultanoglu, today, the UN Representative Office is considering, together with the government of the country and other partners, a number of initiatives regarding development of microfinancing and microcrediting schemes in Belarus. "We believe that microcrediting is able to play an important role, for example, in promoting sustainable development of Chernobyl affected areas, and to contribute to the sphere of small and medium businesses," Ms Sultanoglu has emphasized.

www.yearofmicrocredit.org

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