Partners and Sponsors

Asociació Comunidades is a non-profit organisation, which began in Spain to help local communities set up community banks (CAFs, ‘self-managed financial communities’) for groups with limited financial means and access to financial services, especially Spain’s ever-growing immigrant population. Asociació guides a CAF with the set-up process through knowledge transfers, provides all necessary training during a CAF’s formative stage, and attends monthly meetings until a CAF is self-managing.

The European Microfinance Network (EMN) was set up in 2003 with the support of the European Commission and the French Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC). EMN's mission is to promote microfinance as a tool to fight social and economic exclusion and to promote micro entrepreneurship and self-employment. This is achieved by supporting the development of microfinance organisations through the dissemination of good practices and by improving the regulatory frameworks for microfinance, self-employment and microentreprises at the European Union and Member State levels.

Fair Finance was established in 2005. It offers a range of affordable loan products to its customers and advice about money to the general public. Fair Finance was created as a bi-product of The Environmental Trust, who at its inception offered advice to indebted housing association tenants in East London and microcredit lending to excluded women who wanted to take up self employment. Fair Finance was set up to provide a fair deal to financially excluded communities in London and serve as an ethical and socially responsible lending company.

Among Fair Finance’s services are:

KIZ (Communication and Innovation Centre) GmbH, was established in 1997 to encourage entrepreneurialism and to support people to start up their own business. In the past ten years, KIZ has assisted over 10,000 entrepreneurs and their businesses through consulting, training, and coaching, and has become one of Germany’s leading personal and professional development consultancies.

Founded in 1997, the Microfinance Centre (MFC) is an international grassroots network of over 100 microfinance institutions from across Europe and Asia. Its members are committed to microfinance (as providers of financial services, capital, or technical assistance) and include banks, non governmental organisations, social and commercial investors, development institutions, and international private volunteer organisations.

Réseau Financement Alternatif (RFA or Alternative Financing Network) is a citizens' movement for financial responsibility and solidarity that started in 1987 in French-speaking Belgium. Today, RFA carries out public awareness campaigns urging a more responsible use of money and develops tools to encourage its members to invest responsibly and for government to take more action to promote ethical and social finance.