Microfinance Focus, October 18, 2011: ACCION, a leading microfinance pioneer marked its 50th Anniversary on Monday. In its fifty years of journey, ACCION has helped build 62 microfinance institutions in 31 countries on 4 continents.

Founded as a volunteer organization focused initially on Venezuela, ACCION is currently serving millions of clients across the globe with an active loan portfolio of $4.6 billion.

ACCION has extended its financial services to many of the world's poorest and most underserved regions, including Africa, India and China. In the last two years, ACCION has launched new ventures in Inner Mongolia, China; Cameroon; Brazil's Amazonas region; and Bihar, one of India's poorest states, to help provide the underprivileged with economic opportunity.

"The work that ACCION does is life-changing for so many," said Diana Taylor, chair of ACCION's Board of Directors. "Our clients' optimism and commitment to hard work and the dedication of our staff reaffirms one's faith in the ability to thrive through personal effort. Microfinance is a very important part of that process."

"Since we began, microfinance has grown in scale by orders of magnitude, serving 150 million of the world's entrepreneurial poor," said Michael Schlein, ACCION president and CEO. "But there are billions more of the world's poor who could benefit from access to financial services. Our vision is to build a financially inclusive world and give people access to the financial tools they need to improve their lives. To accomplish this, we will build the next generation of top-tier microfinance institutions, push the frontiers of financial inclusion beyond MFIs, and build a strong microfinance industry with the highest possible standards."

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of ACCION's U.S. microfinance program, launched in 1991 in response to growing income inequality and unemployment