Announcements

MicroNed provides funding to MicroFinance Transparency

Amsterdam, Netherlands (13 January 2009) – MicroNed, a microfinance network of several Dutch Development Finance Organizations, has announced its support of MicroFinance Transparency by making a generous donation, qualifying them as a Platinum-level sponsor of MFTransparency. MicroNed members Hivos, ICCO, and Oxfam Novib together pooled their resources to assemble the donation in order to support MicroFinance Transparency’s mission of promoting transparent pricing in the global microfinance industry. MicroFinance Transparency hopes to be the venue for the microfinance industry to publicly demonstrate its commitment to pricing transparency, integrity and poverty alleviation.

A donation to MicroFinance Transparency was a natural fit with MicroNed’s commitment to Social Performance Management (SPM), one of the network’s priority themes. MicroFinance Transparency will use the MicroNed proceeds to implement data collection in six new countries as well to support the improvement of project methodology, data analysis and development of educational materials related to pricing transparency.

MicroNed was created in 2006, as a network of the Dutch Development Finance Organizations Cordaid, Hivos, ICCO and Oxfam Novib, to cooperate on a structural basis with respect to the establishment of a specialised sector approach for microfinance. In 2008 Rabobank Foundation joined MicroNed. Its mission is to strengthen and coordinate the joint contribution of its member organizations to the microfinance sector, through sharing of each other’s expertise and experiences, through joint knowledge development and through capacity development of staff.

MFTransparency continues to grow at a rapid rate and intends to implement its initiative in five new countries by the end of 2009. MicroFinance Transparency would not be able to carry out operations without the generous support and financial backing from organizations like Hivos, ICCO and Oxfam Novib.