AFF agrees with Gloria Ruiz, Pro Mujer's Country Director in Nicaragua: "As long as men have all the opportunities and the women are left behind, there will never be development." Pro Mujer empowers women's groups with microloans coupled with medical services, business classes, and training in human rights and violence prevention. With a grant from AFF, Pro Mujer has expanded into the country's poorest region, Matagalpa, creating 19 communal women's banks reaching around 500 people. The groups of 20-30 women elect their own leaders and administer small loans to each other to start businesses, educate their children, and make home improvements.

What would it be like to walk two hours a day with a bucket of dirty water on your head... instead of going to school or work? This is daily reality for a billion people who will never have a clean, accessible drink of water, and for the majority of the population of rural Nicaragua. With capacity building grants from AFF, El Porvenir in Nicaragua has helped villagers build their own wells, latrines, wash stations and tree groves. The creation of clean water and sanitation facilities with local labor not only stems disease and life-threatening diarrhea, but draws communities closer together.

Acción works worldwide to expand microfinance to the 80% of the world's population who have no access to formal banking services. In Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, 33% of the population relies on gifts ("remittances") from relatives overseas as their primary source of income. With help from AFF, ACCIÓN and FAMA (its microfinance partner) have made it possible for Nicaraguan families to receive micro-loans to repair their homes using remittances as collateral.

"This I believe: healthcare is a human right," proclaims Partners In Health co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer. PIH began in Haiti - the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere - where 80% of the populace lives under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. In partnership with the Haitian government PIH is building a sustainable Haitian-run healthcare system that provides free and comprehensive services to all in need. At the same time PIH does "whatever it takes" to address the conditions of poverty - lack of access to food, water, shelter and security - which lie at the root of disease.

In the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes, indigenous communities eke out a living in a cold but breathtaking mountain topography. In remote communities where no other financial services are offered, Freedom from Hunger has partnered with eight microfinance institutions to bring "Credit with Education" to small circles of women numbering over 100,000 members. At the same time they receive micro-loans, women who have never been to school or seen a doctor receive financial training and health education. Freedom from Hunger measures its success not in currency repaid, but in families freed from poverty, sickness, and hunger.

In Peru, a nation with over 37 language groups, helping indigenous peoples to advance themselves requires partnership. The Hunger Project, with support from AFF, works with Chirapaq, a national network of 30 indigenous women's organizations, to build leadership capacity and develop skills. Four times a year The Hunger Project trains Chirapaq leaders in human rights and decision-making skills so they can advocate on local, regional and national levels. Participants return to their base networks to train women in nutrition, food security, job skills and indigenous rights, impacting the lives of over 1.5 million people.

Oxfam America in Peru and Ecuador empowers indigenous communities to defend their land against corporations extracting resources from below the surface. As community activist Father Marco Araña has explained, "People here have strong roots in the land. Their history and roots compel them to take care of it." Their pastoral life and very survival depend on defending their Amazonian waters from contamination by oil spills and their Andean streams from arsenic pollution by mining.

In Ecuador low-wage workers on commercial flower farms toil long hours amidst toxic pesticides. With support from AFF, TransFair USA has helped convert seven such farms employing over 1,000 workers into Fair Trade enterprises — making Ecuador the #1 exporter of Fair Trade Certified cut flowers. Under Fair Trade conditions workers earn 20% higher wages, pesticides are reduced, and a portion of all profits are returned to workers' associations to be invested in schools, health clinics, job training, and community centers.

A "Banana Revolution" is underway thanks to Massachusetts-based Red Tomato and its partner Oké USA, the first totally Fair Trade tropical fruit company in the US. With a grant from AFF for working capital, Red Tomato and Oké are doubling imports of Fair Trade bananas from a cooperative of 500 small, worker-owned farms in Ecuador. Expanding the market for Fair Trade bananas in the US will bring over $350,000 in social premiums directly back to the workers to fund a health clinic, pay school fees, and buy new equipment for the growers.