Home for a Home program combines home-ownership with philanthropy

Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of microcredit said, "If you want to solve poverty, you have to put people in a position to build their own life."

Allowing two families to build their own lives in new homes is the goal of ING's Huis voor een huis (Home for a home) program, which offers Dutch borrowers taking out a mortgage an option to donate 300 Euros (about 424 U.S. dollars) which will then be matched by the bank and used as microloans for families in Bangladesh and India to use toward building their own homes.

The program, a partnership between ING and the Dutch non-profit Wereldfoundation, uses a microfinancing model that offers the microloans to borrowers with a proven track record of financial responsibility paying back business loans. As these eligible borrowers pay back their loans the pool of money will be available for a microloan for someone else, hopefully creating an opportunity for whole communities to build new homes.

Microcredit extends small loans allowing people in poor areas to start their own businesses. It has expanded into a success story in the war on poverty and is a vital instrument to affect sustainable peace in afflicted areas. The United Nations designated 2005 as the International Year of Microcredit and recently the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yunus and his Grameen Bank.

For more information on ING's Huis voor een huis (Home for a home) program visit: www.ing.nl/huisvooreenhuis.

To learn more about microcredit and it's founder Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus visit www.muhammadyunus.org.

Read an Ode interview with Muhammad Yunus from August 2005 here.

Image via www.ing.nl/huisvooreenhuis.