GUILDANCE MICROFINANCE
Guildance Community Development Foundation need the assistant of volunteers/neighbour to write proposal,research donor,link us to NGO in Canada,USA,UK etc that is interested in funding microfinance.This will also include website design

OBJECTIVE;
• To tackle poverty which had been the bane of development of our people by creating an institution that will assist in improving their income generation, promote their understanding of social problem and ultimately enhance the quality of their living standards.

• To nurture, encourage, and support local level investments in income and employment generating activities.

• To empower the people that our organization had already trained in various vocations to enable them practice the new acquired skills at a sustainable level.

• To put in place a pay back mechanism for every loan given to beneficiaries such that the microfinance bank will be self sustaining in maximum of 3 years.

• To create product and services that will be used to drive deposit and create credit for the sustainability of the microfinance bank.

• To embark on capacity building that will give the beneficiaries of our services the needed managerial and entrepreneurship skill that will make the assistance gotten a life lasting one.

• To obtain a license to operate a micro finance bank which will serve as vehicle/organization to drive and actualize the above objectives.

EXPLANATION OF OUR OBJECTIVES

POVERTY ALLEVIATION: Over the years the Government of Nigeria had embarked on series of policy and institutional reforms aimed at enhancing the flow of finance from the Banking system to small and medium scale industries as well as those that engaged in petty businesses (micro) activities. The convectional Banks perceive micro activities as bad risk; hence the very low of funding to the sector couple with the issues of high cost of fund and the short tenure nature of those funds. Since robust economic growth cannot be achieved without putting in place well focused programs to reduce poverty through empowering the people by increasing their access to credit, the government through the central bank of Nigeria CBN as part of its reform agenda embarked on the micro finance bank aimed at providing financial services to the poor who are not served by the conventional financial institution.
In the past, Nigeria Government has initiated series of micro/ rural programs targeted at the poor with the overriding objective of making credit readily available to those who were traditionally denied access to credit. Such credit was used for the development of small and medium industries which is the springboard for sustainable development in all emerging economies like Nigeria. The government has shown a great concern for the development of SMIs because of the underlying socio economic factors plaguing the nation. Some of the reasons include the past policies failed to generate efficient self sustaining impetus needed to uplift the country to the take-off stage of growth, the increased emphasis on self reliant approach to the development and the recognition that dynamic and growing petty business can contribute substantially to a wide range of developmental objectives. However the full potential of the micro business in the developmental process have not been realized owing to numerous bottlenecks. In the light of this, the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN as part of its reform agenda. Initiated micro finance Banks, a policy initiative aimed at bringing credit to the door step of those that do not have such access under the conventional financial system. The thrust of this paper is to articulate the prospects of the micro finance bank towards boosting the performance of the micro business thereby reducing the level of poverty and enhancing employment generation.

MICRO FINANCE
There are several definitions of the concept of micro finance. It is about providing financial services to the active poor who are traditionally not served by the convectional financial institutions. It is the provision of very small loans (micro credit) to the poor, to help them engage in new productive business activities. It includes a broader range of services mainly credit, savings, insurance, money transfers, loans, and other financial products targeted at the poor.
Micro- financing is not a new phenomenon in the Nigerian society as evidenced by cultural economic activities such as “Esusu” Ajo” ADASHI” “OTATAJE” which were practiced to provide funds for producers in our rural communities. The effort of government in Nigeria is to monetize micro financing in our rural and urban communities to improve the productive capacity of the rural and urban poor, enhance their economic standing which alleviates the level of poverty and aggregated to improve development of the national economy.

MICRO CREDIT
Micro credit refers to small loans made to low income individuals to sustain self employment or to start up very small businesses. Although there is no standard definition of micro credit, in practice such loans are quite small amounting to a few thousand of Naira. Simply put micro finance is the provision of very small loan to the poor to help them engage in new productive business activities or expand or strengthens existing ones.

SMALL AND MEDIUM INDUSTRIES SMI
The concept of SMIs is relative and dynamic. The definitions changes over a period of time and depend largely on a country’s level of development prior to 1992. Different government agencies in Nigeria such as the Centre Bank of Nigeria, The Nigerian Bank for Commerce and Industry, the Centre for Industrial Research and Development (CIRD) and the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND) adopted various definitions of SMIs probably due to difference in policy focus.
However in 1996, the National Council of Industries streamlined the various definitions in order to remove ambiguities and agreed to revise them every four years. Small scale enterprises were defined as those with Fixed assets above N1m but not exceeding N10m excluding land but including working capital while Medium Scale Enterprises are those with Fixed asset excluding land but including working capital of over N10m but not exceeding N40m. the definition were revised in 1996 with small scale industry defined as those with total cost, including working capital but excluding cost of land above N1m but not exceeding N40m with a labour size of between 36 and 100 workers.

CBN MICROFINANCE POLICY

The Central Bank of Nigeria has put in place the following strategic measure to license and regulate the establishment of micro finance banks as well as promoting the establishment of NGO based micro finance institutions. In fact a lot of funds by many NGO channeled towards micro finance were undocumented. Under the current dispensation, the bank has put in place a well coordinated policy meant for NGOs which will equally have a great impact on micro activities. The state and local Governments will be encouraged to participate in micro finance industry by engaging them to devote at least one percent of their annual budgets to micro credit initiatives which would be micro banks. The regulatory institutions for the micro finance banks would be strengthened and a campaign for transparency, professionalism and good governance would be pursued with vigor. Financially, domestic savings would be adequately mobilized while the capital base of the existing microfinance institutions would be followed up by continuous training of the regulators, operators and the beneficiaries from the policy.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MICRO BUSINESS ACTIVITIES
Micro finance as a concept is on economic development approach intended to benefit low income women and men. The term refers to the provision of financial services to low income clients, including the self employed. Financial services generally include savings and credits; however, some microfinance organizations also provide insurance and payment services. In addition to financial intermediation many MFIs provide social intermediation services such as group formation, development of self confidence and training in financial literacy and management capabilities among members of a group. Hence the definition of microfinance often includes both financial intermediation and social intermediation.
Microfinance is not simply banking, it is a development tool.
Microfinance activities usually involves

• Small loans typically for working capital
• Informal appraisal of business and investment
• Collateral substitutes such as group guarantees or compulsory savings
• Access to repeat and larger loans, based on repayment performance
• Streamline loan disbursement and monitoring
• Secure savings
• Enterprises development services such as skill training and marketing and social services.

Microfinance clients are typically self employed, low income entrepreneurs in both urban and rural areas. Clients are often traders, street vendors, small farmers, service providers such as Hairdressers, drivers, Rose plantains sellers and artisans and small producers such as blacksmith and welders. Usually their activities provide a stable source of income (Often from more than one activity)
The poor are bankable, as they can save, invest repay loans and have need for insurance services. The challenge of micro finance is not repayment of loan given to the poor; the poor have integrity and must meet some stipulated conditions before draw down. The challenge is actually generation of enough deposit to meet the rate of loan request due to the level of poverty in the country. Our experience as explained below would testify to our claim that with more fund at our disposal we surely make a lot of people cross the Rubicon of poverty.

EFFECT OF OUR EXPERIENCE IN OUR NGO (GUILDANCE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION)

We have injected lives to many people in Nigeria through microcredit,skill acquisition,managerial skill and entrepreneurship development programme.Guildance Community Development Foundation had trained 1,310 entreptreneurs,loan 90 traders (micro credit) and collection of voluntary daily contribution from 225 as at the time of writing.