The Microcredit Summit held in Washington DC on 2-4 February was the first privately organised development summit. It succeeded in attracting a herd of presidents and prime ministers, queens and first ladies. Because they were there because they wanted to be, their participation may have done more for the cause than an official global summit. Hillary Clinton was the biggest draw. But perhaps by his presence while the hostage crisis continued over in Peru, it was President Fujimori of Peru who lent the most credibility to the summit and its Declaration that microcredit—small loans made to the poorest families, especially women, for self-employment—was a powerful antidote to poverty and its consequences.
The summit was very much a Grameen Bank affair and Sheikh Hasina Wajed had an opportunity to play a prominent role because of Bangladesh´s status as a world leader in microcredit. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, was eulogised by speaker after speaker. Official participation from other South Asian countries, however, was at a very low key, although this was made up by the many "practitioner participants" from the region.
Consciousness-raising among decision makers in donor countries was clearly the main purpose of the summit, and in this it succeeded splendidly, with all the media attention it received and the strong lobbying links to the US Congress of the convening organisation, Results Educational Foundation, and Ms Clinton´s involvement. The latter gave a long slide show of visits to Grameen and SEWA, and explained how the Clintons had known Mr Yunus since their Arkansas days, when they set up a Grameen-type community banking operation. Citicorp, Chase Manhattan and American Express were among the conference sponsors, strengthening the message of the summit that the "poor are bankable".
However, the price that had to be paid for this broad-based and high-profile consciousness raising strategy was a certain over-simplification of the message and occasional degeneration into hype. The summit Plan of Action document was itself guilty in this respect. Although the preamble recognised that microcredit is just part of a broad antipoverty strategy, the Plan of Action went on to say it is the "greatest single intervention known" for reducing the gap between the rich and poor. Too many "feel-good" speakers and every UN agency head had to be given a platform in four long plenary sessions, leaving time for only two technical sessions. In each of these sessions, participants were forced to choose between 15 panel discussions being held simultaneously.