GlobalGiving: Create Economic Opportunities for Pakistani Women

Kashf Receives Skoll Foundation Award

Roshaneh Zafar — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 16:41:29 GMT

Dear Colleague and Friend of Kashf,

We are pleased to announce that Kashf has been selected for the Skoll Foundation award for this year. This award will enable us to provide financial access to communities in the province of Sindh and that way will help us realise our vision of “Financial services for All!”

Warm regards,

Roshaneh Zafar
President
Kashf Foundation

This year's Skoll entrepreneurs include a former French businessman who is building networks to prevent the abuse of street children, two longtime environmentalists whose "Ecological Footprint" enables businesses and governments to measure their role in depleting the world's ecological assets, a community activist who helps villages in India run sustainable sanitation and clean water facilities, and a former accountant who is helping replenish the world's collapsing fish stocks with an international seafood eco-labeling and certification program.

The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship honor and provide support for organizations led by social entrepreneurs who have a demonstrated track record of pioneering social innovations and offering measurable objectives for increasing and expanding the impact of their work. The Skoll Awards are designed to advance lasting solutions to critical social challenges and recognize programs effecting positive change in six issue categories: tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and economic and social equity.

"The social entrepreneurship community received an unprecedented level of recognition recently when the Nobel Peace Prize committee honored one of our own as the person who most embodies the creation of lasting peace," noted Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. "Muhammad Yunus' vision for leading millions out of poverty through access to small amounts of capital has paved the way for hundreds of other social entrepreneurs to marshal their creativity, courage and fortitude to become 21st century change agents. And we need them now more than ever.

"This year's awardees -- as in prior years -- all reflect the essence of a Skoll social entrepreneur: a practical innovator who creates sustainable engines at the grassroots level, putting into place the lasting means to get housing, education, health care and other critical resources to the world's impoverished and vulnerable billions," said Osberg. "They offer a model for a new kind of leader who melds the discipline of business
with the perspective of those less fortunate, and brings a tough-minded optimism to bear on the biggest challenges confronting our communities, our countries and the planet."

Each year's recipients are identified through an open competitive process that surfaces social entrepreneurs whose work has created, or has the potential to create, large-scale, transformational benefit for disadvantaged or disenfranchised populations or for society at large. The Skoll Awards will be presented by Skoll Foundation Chairman Jeff Skoll on
March 28 at the fourth annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford in England. The World Forum convenes a global community of outstanding practitioners and thought leaders in social entrepreneurship to set the future agenda for visionaries who want to transform society.

The 10 organizations receiving the 2007 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship are: Escuela Nueva Foundation, Friends-International, Global Footprint Network, Gram Vikas, Kashf Foundation, Free The Children, Manchester Bidwell Corporation, Marine Stewardship Council, Verite and YouthBuild USA.

Kashf Foundation -- Kashf is a microfinance institution that offers women below the poverty line in Pakistan a way out through access to financial services. Kashf began with 15 clients in 1996 and now assists 15,000 clients, with a recovery rate of 99 percent. It delivers collateral-free microloans, savings and life insurance products through branches that become sustainable within 10 months. Thirty-five percent of its clients move out of poverty within three years.

Social Entrepreneur: Roshaneh Zafar
Grant Objective: To expand operations to 600,000 clients by 2010 in Pakistan's Punjab and Sindh provinces.

Quarterly Report July-September 2006

Roshaneh Zafar — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:29:12 GMT

Dear Friend of Kashf,

We are pleased to share with you Kashf Foundation’s latest quarterly report for your information.

Thank you in advance for your interest in Kashf Foundation.

Sincerely,

Roshaneh Zafar
President

Attachments:

Quarterly Report July-September 2006

Kashf Quarterly Report

Roshaneh Zafar — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:06:09 GMT

Attachments:

Quarterly Report April-June 2006

Update

Roshaneh Zafar — Thu, 04 May 2006 21:10:53 GMT

Dear friends,

We are pleased to share with you a report titled Business Assessment of Successful Kashf clients for your information. The report highlights that continuous access to microfinance provides a tenable window to small entrepreneurs to grow and to develop their businesses over the medium term and that the service charge and the return of the loans can be managed from within the cashflows of the on going businesses.

Regards,

Roshaneh Zafar

Attachments:

Business Assessment of Successful Kashf Clients

Study of Kashf's current client profile

Kashf — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:59:41 GMT

Read the study focusing on assessing Kashf's client profile. The report assesses clients' poverty level and analysis and evaluations of their demographic, educational, monetary, health, hygiene, social networking, gender relations and personal growth indicators.
Attachments:

Poverty Assessment 2006

Kashf's Quarterly Report July-September 2005

Kashf — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:55:55 GMT

Read about Kashf's work from July-September 2005, results achieved in its microfinance and capacity building programs and news about the organization itself.
Attachments:

Quarterly Report July-Sept. 2005

Award for a Kashf client!

Kashf — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:25:49 GMT

The New Year has started with extremely happy tidings for Kashf. Pakistan was one of 8 countries that had been selected worldwide to celebrate the UN year of Microcredit 2005 by holding the Global Entrepreneurship Awards on 31st December 2005 in Islamabad.

Our client Irshad Baji won the award and secured the top most position amongst clients from other Microfinance Institutions. Irshad Bibi was awarded Rs. 75,000 and her loan officer Ms. Iffat Ghulam Fatima was awarded Rs. 10,000.

This is a great honor for us all and it makes us proud of ourselves and of our work. Congratulations to all of you and we hope that the New Year brings many such successes our way.

Read more about Irshad Baji, her small business and the impact she has made on her community.

Attachments:

Irshaad Baji.doc

Stories from Kashf

Kashf — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 17:19:22 GMT

Read the success stories of women involved in Kashf's microfinance projects and see how this project has changed their lives.
Attachments: