In the mountainous terrain of Azad Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan, it isn't easy to start a small business. Banks are far away and in bad weather they’re inaccessible by road. Moreover, the poor people here don’t have the collateral for loans or the ability to pay high interest rates.

In 2004, the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) initiated a community development project to try and address this.

And when a community pools its money together and manages its own micro-credit loans, there are astonishing results.

IFAD’s Joanne Levitan reports:

Duration: 2’30”

These three stories show how community credit allows poor people to lift each other out of poverty.

Source:  IFAD