Fighting Swine Flu in Nicaragua

swine-flu

Through funding microfinance projects in Nicaragua we have fostered a relationship with an organisation called Banex. Banex provides banking services to micro, small and medium businesses that usually wouldn’t have access to financial services.

Following the swine flu outbreak, particularly in Central America, Banex approached us as the Nicaraguan government no longer had resources to ensure that the necessary medical equipment and face masks were made available to schools across the country in order to help stop the spread of the virus.

On hearing the plight of the Nicaraguan government we were happy to provide a donation to Banex to help support the initiative to raise $4,000, enough to supply 22 schools across the country with 5,000 face masks and fully equipped first aid kits.

Richard Wilcox Head of Structured and Asset Finance at The Co-operative Bank said: “Having personally seen at first hand the work Banex does in providing world-class socially-responsible financial services to the people of Nicaragua, particularly those in the poorest rural regions of the country, we felt that this was an initiative very close to our hearts”.

Gabriel Solarzano of Banex said, “The Co-operative Bank’s positive contribution has helped avoid the spread of swine flu across Nicaragua by helping a very vulnerable population – together we have made a real difference”.

Richard Wilcox added “The Co-operative Bank was more than happy to provide our help and support. Clearly everyone has an obligation to ensure that we do everything we can to stop the spread of this virus globally and we hope that our donation to this worthwhile initiative will help to do this”.

Swine Flu Image by Flickr user hmerinomx.

Posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 in Campaigns, Microfinance, Microfinance around the globe

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2 Comments. What do you think?

Your comments

  1. Now this is one I’m seriously impressed with; a good choice.

    by Tom at 12:03 pm on June 12th, 2009

  2. Thanks Tom, Kedren from CFS here, we think this is a good choice too.

    We’ve more stories on our Microfinance initiatives coming to the blog soon.

    by kedren at 12:03 pm on June 15th, 2009

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Why Microfinance

We’ve been supporting microfinance initiatives around the globe in over 25 countries worldwide including Nicaragua, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya and Bosnia. To facilitate this support we created a special £25m fund to help the develop small businesses in new and developing countries as well as some of the world’s poorest countries.

What’s this about

In April ‘09 in conjunction with the new goodwithmoney website we re-launched our new and improved good with money blog to encourage greater dialogue with our colleagues, customers, members and anyone else who is interested in the ethical, social responsible and community work that we do.
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