Speech by President of the Republic Tarja Halonen at the Grameen Foundation awards programme in Berlin on 14 September 2004

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I thank Grameen Foundation from my heart for the honour that you have given me and my country. I also feel that a big part of this honour belongs to all the wonderful people I have been privileged to work with. I greatly respect Grameen Foundation's work and hope that I will be worthy of this award.

I also thank Deutsche Bank, which has actively supported Grameen Foundation in its valuable activities. In this connection I also wish to express my appreciation to Professor Muhammad Yunus for your pioneering work to develop micro-finance and fight poverty.

Strengthening entrepreneurship and promoting productive activities is a useful tool in reducing poverty. Our goal is to help people to be in charge of their own lives and become active citizens. Productive activities at the local level create preconditions for economic growth, the utilization of national resources and the creation of jobs.

A central pillar in the development of a society is its ability to utilize the resources of all its citizens and get them involved in national development. As we have learned from Grameen's example, promoting financial services for poor people has a key significance in this. They have offered underprivileged population groups a chance to start their own productive activities, creating jobs for themselves and later on perhaps for others as well.

We can justifiably ask whether it is correct to talk of micro-credit, since the sums that seem so small to us are vary large for the millions of poor people in the developing countries. In fact, individual loans for productive projects have opened the way to a surer and safer life for millions of men and above all women. These are great things from the viewpoint of the individual and the family.

The UN Family has for a long time been active in the field of Micro-Credit. In 1997, the United Nations adopted a resolution entitled "The Role of Micro-Credit in the Eradication of Poverty" and has in 1998 designated year 2005 as the International Year of Micro-Credit. This shows how what a recognised key instrument micro-credit is in reducing poverty

In promoting economic activity, special attention must be paid to sustainability. This is important everywhere as we have experienced crises in financial institutions in industrialised countries, also in Finland in the 1990’s. Financial institutions need to operate on a healthy basis in order to create sustainable service structures to help the poor.

A high priority needs to be given on building social capital. Improving living conditions, education, income formation and employment among poor people strengthens their self-esteem, possibility to influence matters and ability to be in charge of their own lives. This in turn paves way for development of the whole society.

Grameen Bank has shown how activities based on trust and aimed at the poor can be sustainable and achieve significant results in improving the living conditions of citizens - women as well as men. As proof of this, the model created in Grameen's activities has been successfully copied in other developing countries and even industrialized countries.

As an example I would like to mention that in Finland a state owned financing company has since 1977 provided small loans for women entrepreneurs. This shows that the Grameen bank's original idea and model have met a real need and been sustainable.

At the same time that Grameen's financial service model has been shared with other countries, it has also been successfully expanded to other fields. One example is the expansion of telephone services to new population groups. This innovation has - once again - created an opportunity for poor people to develop business activities and to become full members of society.

Allow me to thank Grameen Foundation, Deutsche Bank and Professor Yunus one more time. I wish you the very best success in your work!