The goal of the 1997 Micro Credit Summit was that in 9 years (by the end of 2005) that 100 million poorest of the poor would receive microcredit services to help them help themselves generate increased wealth with the hope that many would be on the road to sustainably being lifted out of extreme poverty.

The 2004 status report states that there is good progress towards this goal. This is being watched as one of the key movements in helping achieve the UN’s Millenium Development Goals which in a nutshell are to half extreme poverty by 2015.

Here are three myths about microfinance which they address:

Myth one—microfinance institutions cannot reach the poorest because they are too costly to identify and motivate.

Myth two—if an institution does reach the very poor, it cannot become financially selfsufficient because the added cost of identifying and motivating the very poor and dealing with very small loans is too great.

Myth three—an institution that somehow manages to reach the very poor and become financially self-sufficient will only be adding a debt burden to those families.

Check out the report for how they respond to these myths.