By Emily Allred
WCCN NICA Fund Manager

“We are no longer a footnote in the financial system of the world. We are part of the mainstream — and hopefully we’ll be the core of the mainstream.” This statement from Dr. Muhammad Yunus’ speech with which he addressed delegates at the opening ceremony of the Global Microcredit Summit would have seemed like an exaggeration before October 13, 2006, when the world learned that Yunus and the Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. One month later the fact that microfinance has reached such scale comes at no surprise to the 2,000 microfinance leaders, practitioners, development workers and bankers from over 100 countries meeting at the Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report 2006, 113,261,390 clients are reported to currently be taking loans from 3,133 microcredit institutions as of December 31, 2005. Of these clients, 81,949,036 are considered among the worlds poorest, earning below US$1 a day.

By Carlos Arenas
WCCN’s Executive Director

WCCN is proud to commemorate 15 years working in microfinance and is no less proud of its work with the Nicaraguan women’s movement during the last 16 years. In fact, the Women’s Empowerment Project (WEP), is WCCN’s longest-running program. It was initiated in May 1990 following a delegation to Nicaragua focusing on the work of “Casas de la Mujer” (Women’s Centers). In this article I would like to provide an overview of what we have accomplished over the years and elaborate on where WEP is currently headed.

By Matt Early
Just Coffee

Recently fellow Just Coffee worker-owner Mike Miller and I had the opportunity to visit the organization La FEM (Fundación Entre Mujeres) in Estelí, Nicaragua. After finding out about the group from WCCN, we were excited to meet them and learn more about their work while exploring the possibility of buying their coffee to roast and sell in Madison.
La FEM is not simply a coffee growing cooperative. Founded in 1996, they organized to work on issues of domestic violence against women, women’s health, education, and job training. Upon meeting them we were immediately impressed with their level of organization and their dedication to women’s rights as a political and social imperative.

By Susan Frisbie
WCCN Development and Marketing Director

On Tuesday, November 7th millions of voters across the United States sat in their living rooms watching the television while waiting to hear the latest mid-term Congressional election results arriving from the polls. The night did not end well for the Fox News faithful who may have found further news to sulk about if they watched the news ticker at the bottom of the screen, as a familiar name they hadn’t seen in quite some time scrolled by. That name was Daniel Ortega. Though the Nicaraguan elections were held on Sunday, November 5th, it wasn’t until Tuesday evening with 91 percent of the ballots counted that Eduardo Montealegre, the U.S. government-favored right-wing candidate conceded the Nicaraguan presidential election to Ortega.

Bianca’s bright pink house is exemplary of the style of homes in the colorful neighborhood of Santa Clara, a community of Juigalpa. She and her seven children, her aunt, and two grandchildren share the home built from concrete with several rooms and running water. Only a short time ago, however, Bianca and her family were sharing a single room made from scraps of plastic and zinc and staying dry was a constant challenge. She longed for a house where she wouldn’t get wet, but she needed help.

WCCN is proud to announce the release of Better Futures: Voices from the Nicaraguan Credit Alternatives Fund (NICA Fund), an informational video, which details how microcredit, provided through the NICA Fund, has positively affected the lives of the working poor in Nicaragua.

Using a sustainable model, the NICA Fund helps alleviate poverty by channeling funds from socially responsible North American investors to Nicaraguan nongovernmental organizations (partner agencies) that specialize in lending to the poor. Through the NICA Fund model, small loans, typically 600 dollars or less, are issued to Nicaraguan entrepreneurs, farmers and households who are not served by commercial banks.

Internship Opportunities
at the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua (WCCN)

WCCN interns work in a productive capacity while furthering knowledge and skills in the field of international development. Internships are uncompensated. WCCN can work with university departments so that students can receive academic credit.

WCCN encourages interns to participate in our study tours to Nicaragua (in January or June) as a way to have a first hand experience and take full advantage of their internships.

By Susan Frisbie
WCCN Development & Marketing Director

Over the past year, Nicaragua has slowly been gaining media coverage in the U.S. The fact that Nicaragua, a country that most Americans have long forgotten, has appeared on the mainstream U.S. media radar can only indicate one thing— elections are approaching. This is not uncommon; after all, the same trend of media coverage can be seen all over Latin America especially when a leading candidate does not fit the Washington neoliberal mold. In Nicaragua, that candidate is Daniel Ortega. And inevitably where Ortega’s name appears in print, Hugo Chavez’s name follows, setting off red flags all over Washington.

By Marc Becker
Truman State University Professor and WCCN Study Tour Participant

I have become interested in two themes related to constructions of gender in Latin America. One is more academic and concerns the meanings of “feminism” in a Latin American context. The other is related more to political strategies, specifically the relationship between social movements and electoral politics. The WCCN Women’s Empowerment Project study tour to Nicaragua helped me rethink both of these themes, challenging my assumptions and coming to deeper understandings of how gender works not only in Latin America but throughout the Americas.

By Carlos Arenas
WCCN Executive Director

Between June 6 and 9, 2006, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hosted the first Midwest Social Forum (MWSF), a regional gathering of social activists committed to finding the way to make its slogan a reality: “Another World is Possible”.

The MWSF was inspired by the successful example of the World Social Forum (WSF) gatherings, first organized in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001 by a very broad coalition of progressive social movements and activists from Latin America and elsewhere. Originally the WSF was conceived as an alternative event to the World Economic Forum, the elitist meeting of the heads of state from the wealthiest countries and CEOs of multinational corporations held every year in the Swiss city of Davos. Since the beginning, the WSF has been very successful, growing from 3,000 participants in 2001 to 100,000 in 2005. As a result, the WSF philosophy and format has been adopted and reproduced worldwide. The slogan, “Another World is Possible” has turned out to be a very powerful idea that has mobilized millions of people around the globe that share the belief that it is both necessary and possible to comprehensively change things worldwide.