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[edit] ACCION USA

ACCION USA is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide microloans and other financial services to low-and-moderate-income entrepreneurs who are unable to access bank credit for their small businesses. Over the past three decades, low-income people all over the world have used small loans to grow their small businesses and improve their lives.

[edit] The Impact of Microcredit

Microenterprise programs like ACCION USA can play an important role in the revitalization of local economies. [1] Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in local economies through job creation. Studies of microenterprises indicate that each business generates about 1.5 jobs; equating to the retention of locally generated profits and wealth distribution. In a five year study of low-income entrepreneurs, 53% of those individuals who received assistance from microenterprise programs were able to move above the poverty line.

In 1999, the ACCION USA and the US ACCION Network commissioned a 3 year Impact Study which looked at 849 businesses to see if they progressed over time in terms of average monthly profits, take home income and business assets/equit. [2]The study revelead that after just two small business loans over 17 months, U.S. ACCION Network clients increased their:

  • take home income by 38%, or an average of $455 per month
  • average monthly profits by 47%
  • business equity by 42%

[edit] History

ACCION USA was launched in 1991 and is a subsidiary of Accion International, a private, nonprofit organization that gives the self-employed poor the financial tools they need —microenterprise loans, business training, and other financial services — to work their way out of poverty. A world pioneer in microfinance, ACCION International issued the first microloan in 1973 in Brazil. ACCION International’s partner microfinance institutions today are providing loans as low as $100 to poor men and women entrepreneurs in 22 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

[edit] States of Operation

Massachusetts

  • Georgia
  • Florida
  • New York
  • California
  • New Mexico
  • Texas
  • Illinois

[edit] External Links

[edit] Notes

  1. Elaine Edgecomb and Joyce Klein, Opening Opportunities, Building Ownership: Fulfilling the Promise of Microenterprise in the United States, FIELD (The Fund for Innovation, Effectiveness, Learning and Dissemination) of the Aspen Institute, 2005.
  2. http://www.accionusa.org/site/c.lvKVL9MUIsG/b.1388811/k.46F7/ACCIONs_Impact_on_Small_Businesses.htm
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