Three weeks after a Bangladeshi economist won the Nobel Peace Prize for revolutionizing banking for the poor, his followers said Wednesday they're determined to help 175 million people living on less than US$1 a day get small loans by the end of 2015. Organizers of the Microcredit Summit Campaign had intended to reach its initial goal of 100 million people by last December, but fell short by about 18 million.
Still, 82 million people have recieved the loans since the campaign was launched in 1997. And that credit — to purchase basics such as a cow for milk or a mobile phone to sell calls — has improved the lives of 410 million family members, said Campaign director Sam Daley-Harris.
An estimated 1 billion of the planet's people live on less than a dollar a day; another 3 billion are believed to subsist on $2 (€1.57) a day, or half the world's population.
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