Counterpart International's microenterprise development services expand opportunities for the enterprising poor to develop new livelihoods and improve their household's incomes.

Counterpart International (Counterpart) provides loans and other financial services, business literacy training and livelihood skills, typically in rural, agricultural communities where Counterpart is also addressing other essential needs such as health and nutrition, basic education, agricultural productivity and better environmental stewardship.
 
Our microenterprise development services give smallholder farmer households and rural micro-entrepreneurs access to working capital, increase technical and business skills, look at promising economic sub-sectors, and offer market-oriented assistance where it makes sense.  Our services assist the enterprising poor to establish and operate micro-businesses such as meat and fish vending, small general merchandise stores, motor parts and tire repair businesses and hardware shops.  These microenterprises provide essential goods, services and employment for their communities, while producing alternative sources of income for agricultural households.
 
Counterpart also provides loan capital and technical support to lenders — microfinance institutions, rural credit cooperatives, and village banks — to ensure financial sustainability of their operations and responsiveness to rural households' needs for loans, savings, and other financial services. We embed a rigorous organizational development strategy that targets long-term sustainability and builds lasting links between lenders and their borrowers, ensuring that these organizations continue to serve their communities long after Counterpart is gone. 
 
Examples:

• In Vietnam, Counterpart established the Green Future Fund to provide financial resources to local women and their families to start up eco-friendly micro-businesses and decrease their reliance on illegal logging and other environmentally destructive practices in the buffer zone surrounding the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park.  After only a few years of operation, the Fund has reached over 1,500 households with $250,000 in loans, while establishing a 100 percent repayment rate and generating revenues equal to 85 percent of the Fund's operating costs.  The average annual income of the Fund members rose from 3.7 million Vietnam Dong (VND) to 18.9 million, and the number of households reporting income from forestry declined to a mere 3.5 percent. 
• In northern Senegal, Counterpart established a microfinance network to facilitate relationships between MFIs and commercial banks, donors and other MFIs; ensure the introduction of best practices and standards in disclosure and reporting and MFI's ability to comply with national regulations; and to represent the sector's needs before policymakers and regulatory agencies, donors, other financial sector institutions and the public. With a current revolving credit fund of over $200,000, and a 98 percent repayment rate, these MFIs facilitate farmer access to credit, seeds, tools and rental of farm land to boost the production and processing of major cash crops such as rice, tomato, onions, sweet potato, okra and dairy products. To date over 2,130 micro-loans - 71 percent to women - have been provided to farmers and entrepreneurs. 

Photo: © Counterpart International.