This initiative was inspired from international developmental thoughts that provide our world with a more balanced allocation of resources. The proposal was set off by AGFUND when it started to offer micro-credits loans through the NGOs, given for targeted groups that needed help to start small productive projects in their communities. This was the prelude for the spreading out of the culture of an effective mechanism of financing, "the micro-credit". These practices that were launched by AGFUND on the national level in the early eighties of the twentieth century, have now become regional and international. They also became major priorities for policies of the third millennium formulated by citizens of the world.

The Banks for the Poor depend on the good application of the mechanism of Micro-credits. This is done by giving the chance in a community for poor individuals, who hardly have any possibility of getting loans from normal banks due to the amount of guarantees requested, to be able to obtain loans to help them open their own small business.

Banks For The Poor

AGFUND adopted its own project for establishing banks for the poor across the Arab world. Triggered by its conviction of the success of such a project if it is made available to the poor, it created this integrated financial service.

AGFUND wanted it to be achieved through: micro-loans, savings, and insurance. AGFUND was confident that providing these loans will help fighting poverty and will alleviate its impact on Arab communities. It will also help raising standards of living of the poor so they become self-reliant, more creative and productive.

The establishment of these banks adopted by Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, President of AGFUND, is the fruit of long-standing that goes back to more than a quarter of a century, when AGFUND was dealing with the various segments of the society to get acquainted to acknowledge sufferings of these segments. The prominent initiative reflected AGFUND’s awareness of the continuous changing perception of sustainable human development.

The Agfund-Grameen Model

With the determination of AGFUND's management to persist on struggling against poverty across the Arab world, a multi-faceted initiative that led to the creation of a strategic partnership of the AGFUND-GRAMEEN Model was born. The result was the establishement of this joint venture of AGFUND poverty related projects, with the founder of the Grameen Bank for combating poverty in Bangladesh, Professor Muhammad Yunis, winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, .

The AGFUND-GRAMEEN model was developed to set up banks that would provide integrated financial services for the poor in cooperation and coordination with governments as well as the private sector.  Both partners were convinced that this cooperation strategy would consequently establish a technical support unit to serve the banks for the poor in many ways:

 -      that it will spread the culture of the micro-loaning concepts,

-      it will encourage institutions to adopt it and apply its practices and financial services,

-      it will consequently identify pioneering projects

-      it will propose them to the AGFUND International Prize.

The initiative has been transformed concretely through four banks:

-      The National Bank for Financing Small Projects in Jordan,

-      The Amal Bank for Micro-finance in Yemen,

-      Al Amal Institution for Developing small Enterprises in Egypt,

-      The Ibda'a Microfinance Bank in Bahrain.

* Preparations are currently underway to establish the bank in: Sierra Leone, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Oman.