We deliver essential solutions to complex development challenges, resulting in a more just, prosperous and equitable global community.
Since our founding in 1952, Global Communities brings together local ingenuity and global insights to save lives, advance equity and secure strong futures. We do that by engaging with communities, governments, the private sector and civil society as partners for good, bringing together complementary strengths and shared responsibilities to work toward common goals.
74,000+
people trained in over 340 public-private partnerships to help them improve their livelihoods
Expanding Economic Opportunity
Supporting Small and Medium-Sized Businesses and Community Savings and Lending Groups
The Vitas Group
Vitas Group, created by Global Communities as a for-profit holding company, operates a network of microfinance companies, predominantly in the Middle East. Vitas Group connects people with financial services to help them become full social and economic participants in their communities. As a unique group of companies with more than 20 years of proven success lending to micro, small, and medium enterprises, Vitas Group is the only such investment vehicle for impact investors in the region. Since 2004, Vitas companies have disbursed more than $3 billion to over one million customers, with an annual default rate below two percent.
Loan Guarantee Facilities
Since 2008, Global Communities has been a leading provider of loan guarantees, in partnership with the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (formerly OPIC), the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Through our Loan Guarantee Facilities, we help businesses in emerging economies that are too large for traditional microfinance and too small for commercial banks access credit by partially guaranteeing the loans of commercial bank partners. This helps to diversify and strengthen developing economies and provides incentives to commercial banks to begin lending to markets they previously would not have considered. Our Loan Guarantee Facilities have made 1,363 loans and over $389 million worth of guarantees, focusing particularly on women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises.
Expanding Economic Opportunity
Global Communities helps grow economies from the bottom up, including by supporting community savings and lending for over 600,000 women-led economic self-help groups. In addition, Global Communities operates the largest international network of microfinance institutions in the Middle East, with major operations in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza, as well as institutions in Romania, Ghana and Egypt, all offering small loans to families and entrepreneurs left out of the formal financial sector.
GLOBAL INTERSECTIONS
The world's most complex development challenges require interconnected, comprehensive solutions. Without regard for borders or categories, Global Communities looks across our decades of learnings to surface insights and innovations that shape new approaches to meet these urgent challenges head-on and advance our vision of more equitable development and more inclusive growth.
