Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 114 Part 2.djvu/197

 PUBLIC LAW 106-309—OCT. 17, 2000 114 STAT. 1079 Sec. 403. Processing of applications for transportation of humanitarian assistance abroad by the Department of Defense. 404. Working capital fund. 405. Increase in authorized number of employees and representatives of the United States mission to the United Nations provided living quarters in New York. 406. Availability of VOA and Radio Marti multilingual computer readable text and voice recordings. 407. Availability of certain materials of the Voice of America. 408. Paul D. Coverdell Fellows Program Act of 2000. Sec Sec. Sec. Sec. Sec. TITLE I—MICROENTERPRISE FOR SELF- Microenterpnse RELLVNCE ACT OF 2000 ASf' SEC. 101. SHORT TITLE. This title may be cited as the "Microenterprise for Self-Reliance Act of 2000". SEC. 102. FINDINGS AND DECLARATIONS OF POLICY. Congress makes the following findings and declarations: (1) According to the World Bank, more than 1,200,000,000 people in the developing world, or one-fifth of the world's population, subsist on less than $1 a day. (2) Over 32,000 of their children die each day from largely preventable malnutrition and disease. (3)(A) Women in poverty generally have larger work loads and less access to educational and economic opportunities than their male counterparts. (B) Directly aiding the poorest of the poor, especially women, in the developing world has a positive effect not only on family incomes, but also on child nutrition, health and education, as women in particular reinvest income in their families. (4)(A) The poor in the developing world, particularly women, generally lack stable employment and social safety nets. (B) Many turn to self-employment to generate a substantial portion of their livelihood. In Africa, over 80 percent of employ- ment is generated in the informal sector of the self-employed poor. (C) These poor entrepreneurs are often trapped in poverty because they cannot obtain credit at reasonable rates to build their asset base or expand their otherwise viable self-employ- ment activities. (D) Many of the poor are forced to pay interest rates as high as 10 percent per day to money lenders. (5)(A) The poor are able to expand their incomes and their businesses dramatically when they can access loans at reasonable interest rates. (B) Through the development of self-sustaining microfinance programs, poor people themselves can lead the fight against hunger and poverty. (6)(A) On February 2-4, 1997, a global Microcredit Summit was held in Washington, District of Columbia, to launch a plan to expand access to credit for self-employment and other financial and business services to 100,000,000 of the world's poorest families, especially the women of those families, by 2005. While this scale of outreach may not be achievable in 22 USC 2151 note. 22 USC 2151f note.

�