PBS Microfinance Documentary Highlights Unitus and ACCION

PBS Microfinance Documentary Highlights Unitus and ACCION

'Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty' Airs Thursday, October 27

REDMOND, Wash. and BOSTON, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Unitus and ACCION International, two leading microfinance organizations, are featured in an upcoming PBS documentary on microfinance scheduled to begin airing on PBS affiliates on Thursday, October 27. Microfinance, a proven solution to poverty, is at the forefront of global poverty relief efforts and is an integral part of attaining the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. The airing of "Small Fortunes" is particularly timely as the UN International Year of Microcredit draws to a close this November.

The documentary, entitled "Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty," is an inspiring one-hour film showing how small loans can help the world's poor work their way out of poverty. Through the stories of microentrepreneurs in places such as India, Kenya, Peru and the Philippines, but also closer to home in New York, "Small Fortunes" movingly illustrates the impact microfinance is having in alleviating global poverty.

ACCION and Unitus are leaders in the effort to bring microfinance to more of the world's poor than ever before. The two organizations recently joined forces to create the Unitus-ACCION Alliance for India and opened the India Microfinance Center in Bangalore, India, as a base of operations from which to grow microfinance institutions in India. Together, their plan is to reach over 15 million working poor in India over the next 10 years. Featured in the documentary are comments by Mike Murray, co-founder and Board Chair of Unitus, Geoff Davis, president and CEO of Unitus, and Maria Otero, president and CEO of ACCION International.

More information about the documentary, microfinance, other featured organizations such as Grameen Bank and FINCA International, as well as a short preview of the film, are available at KBYU-TV's website, www.small-fortunes.com. DVD copies of the film can also be purchased on this site.

To learn when "Small Fortunes" will air on local PBS affiliates, visit the PBS website here: http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder

About Unitus

Unitus is a global microfinance accelerator that acts as a social venture capital investor for the microfinance industry. Unitus identifies the highest-potential microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries and helps accelerate their growth through capital investments and capacity- building consulting, thus empowering them to help exponentially more poor people worldwide. In doing so, Unitus aims to demonstrate that MFIs can be run as profitable, large-scale, poverty-focused businesses with links to local capital markets. As of September 2005, Unitus had seven MFI partners worldwide serving more than 475,000 poor clients. Based in Redmond, Washington, USA, and with an office in Bangalore, India, Unitus relies on innovative financial instruments, and the financial resources of like-minded individuals and foundations, to fulfill its mission. For more information about Unitus, visit: www.unitus.com.

About ACCION International

ACCION International is a private, nonprofit organization with the mission of giving people 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 was founded in 1961 and issued the first microloan in 1973 in Brazil. ACCION International's partner microfinance institutions today are providing loans as low as $100 to poor women and men entrepreneurs in 22 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and in the U.S. Since 1992, ACCION and its partners have disbursed $7.6 billion in microloans to more than 4.7 million borrowers, 65 percent of whom are women. Ninety-seven percent of these loans have been repaid. For the past two years, ACCION has been among 25 organizations awarded the 2005 Social Capitalist Award by Fast Company magazine for "using business excellence to engineer social change." For more information about ACCION International, visit: www.accion.org.

Media Contacts:

Robert Lowry Public Relations Associate Unitus Tel: +1-425-881-2574 rlowry@unitus.com

Bruce MacDonald VP, Communications ACCION International Tel. +1-617-616-1546 bmacdonald@accion.org

This press release distributed by PRWEB ( http://www.prwebdirect.com/ ), a service of eMediaWire.

Source: Unitus

CONTACT: Robert Lowry, Public Relations Associate of Unitus, +1-425-881-2574, or rlowry@unitus.com; or Bruce MacDonald, VP, Communications of ACCION International, +1-617-616-1546, or bmacdonald@accion.org

Web site: http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder

Web site: http://www.small-fortunes.com/

Web site: http://www.accion.org/

Web site: http://www.unitus.com/

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