WINNERS OF THE 2005 IPS/IFAD JOURNALISM AWARD FOR MICROFINANCE REPORTING

April 19, 2006

Three female journalists from Uganda, South Africa and Sri Lanka are the winners of the 2005 IPS/IFAD Award for Microfinance Reporting. Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura, Christina Scott and Chandani Jayatilleke will each receive a cash prize of 1,000 USD.

IPS news agency and IFAD, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, created the 2005 Reporting Microfinance Award to increase media attention to the issue, recognising the United Nations designation of 2005 as the International Year of Microcredit.

The Members of the international jury were Ferial Haffajee, Editor, Mail and Guardian, South Africa, Farhana Haque Rahman, Chief, Media Relations, Special Events and Programmes, IFAD and Miren Gutierrez, Chief Editor, IPS News Agency

Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura’s story written from Masaka in southern Uganda explains small-scale loans that help families that care for AIDS orphans. The story focused on the pancake and doughnut business that has helped one client, a widow, to support her own six children, and six others orphaned by the pandemic.

The judges commended her for taking the reader “into the heart of the Aids pandemic”, analysing both how microcredit can help to alleviate the consequences of the disease and how it poses a challenge to the sustainability of loan repayment.

Christina Scott’s story from Cape Town, South Africa describes the workings of the stokvel, traditional savings clubs that grew under apartheid to meet the microfinance needs of the poor majority. Stokvels continue to provide “ a homegrown solution to the fact that banks are expensive, complicated and remote”.

Her story was chosen by the jury, “"for its evocative qualities; she obviously sat in on a meeting and got to know the stokvel...enjoyed the way in which she combined the analysis and the colour".

Chandani Jayatilleke wrote her story from Akkaraipattu, Sri Lanka. The judges said it “
"makes a compelling case of how women who survived the tsunami disaster are able to rebuild their lives and the role that microcredit played in helping them do so".

Her article relates how a 300 USD half grant and half loan enabled one tsunami survivor to plant and harvest rice, enabling her to pay back the loan and re-establish her life as a rice farmer.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development is the UN agency dedicated to combating rural poverty in the most disadvantaged regions of the world. Microfinance is an important part of the work of IFAD.

Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), the world's leading provider of information on global issues, is backed by a network of journalists in more than 100 countries. IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.

For more information please visit: http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/microcredit/award.asp

For more information:
Contact: Miren Gutierrez, Chief Editor, IPS <mgutierrez@ips.org>