In the world's poorest countries, millions of children live in desperate need of the very things we often take for granted - food, medicine, education and safe drinking water. Without these basics, they are often denied the chance they need to ever realise their full potential.
A little hard cash goes a long way in the developing world. Yet many women are trapped in poverty because they can't get access to credit. That's where microfinance programmes come in – and lives are revolutionised.
When the credit crunch crunched, many of us had a nasty shock. Brought up on a diet of easy credit, we simply weren't accustomed to banks that like to say 'no'.
The days of quick, cheap loans are long gone.
However, this merely serves to underline how privileged we are in the west. In many parts of the world, credit simply means borrowing enough money from your neighbour to buy a loaf of bread.
At best it means a loan shark will give you some finance in return for 50% interest. Very few people in developing countries have access to the credit that would revolutionise their lives.
They don't need much to start a business, or to buy land to farm or stock to rear.
About 1.2 billion people live on less than $1 a day, and around 70% of these people are women. With little or no access to healthcare, and without the means to provide nutritious food for themselves and their families, poverty stricken women and their children are particularly vulnerable.
With International Woman's Day taking place on 8 March 2009, the time is ripe to tackle this issue with renewed vigour.
Plan, a child-centred community development organisation, helps empower women around the globe. It works hard to increase their access to education and healthcare, and supports their efforts to achieve economic security.
Plan's 'Because I Am a Girl' campaign aims to transform the lives of millions of young women and girls in response to particularly bleak global statistics: girls aged 15-19 account for 50% of sexual assault worldwide; 62 million girls are denied a primary education.
But perhaps one of the most life-changing and little-known aspects of Plan's work is in the field of microfinance – the provision of small loans and savings facilities to increase economic security and reduce poverty.
Plan works in partnership with local microfinance organisations to establish and support lending and saving programmes. Through them, women can be granted small loans that can help them start up their own business and lift themselves and their families out of poverty. In time, the programmes become self-financing.
The rural district of Rautahat, Nepal, isn't a good place to be if you're a women. Many are routinely trafficked to big cities for sex work, cheap labour, forced marriage and organ donation.
But Plan's programme there is already helping women such as Shobha, who had been a victim of sexual exploitation.
Shobha used the support of Plan Nepal to train in sewing and cutting and, after training, took out a small loan from the microfinance scheme. That enabled her to buy a sewing machine and start her own tailoring shop.
Now she is earning a good monthly income and passing on her skills to other young girls in the village.
"The programme has brought about change in the lifestyle of the whole village," says Shobha. "Especially the vulnerable ones like me. We now have cheerful faces. My parents in law are very happy too, because I pay for a big part of the household expenses from my earnings."
In the Philippines, a young woman called Araceli used the equivalent of a £12 loan to begin trading in rice. She then used a second loan of £62 to grow her broom-making business to a volume sufficient for her to sell in Manila, where she got double what she'd been getting selling to local traders.
With her third loan of £87 she bought a cow. A fourth loan of £125 was again ploughed into her broom-making business. Her fifth loan of £625, combined with her savings, was enough to buy the farm where her husband had worked as a labourer for many years.
She now has 28 cows and, because she had an impressive loan record, was able to borrow £1,560 to buy a residential property in the town centre. Now her three children are able to attend college, an achievement most farm tenants can only dream of. With her business booming, she has managed to secure her family a bright future.
Plan currently has microfinance projects helping women such as Araceli throughout the developing world. Her story clearly demonstrates how little acorns can grow into oak trees.
But those little acorns don't come for free. Why not do your bit for International Women's Day? Plan needs your support for it to continue and expand its valuable microfinance initiatives, as well as build upon all the other projects it runs. Click here to find out how you can get involved.
Plan is one of the largest child-centred community development organisations in the world, helping children and their families in 49 of the poorest countries to break the cycle of poverty. http://www.plan-uk.org/
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