Race4Change is racing the 2011 East African Safari Rally to raise awareness of microfinance as a tool for women’s empowerment. We are taking a message of support and opportunity to people who never make it into the towns and cities of Kenya.

We’re proud to share all funds raised (everything goes to charity) to those most in need via four of the world’s foremost microfinance organizations:

Kiva.org: San Francisco-based Kiva.org is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.

Founded in 2005, Kiva now has over 633,000 lenders and has distributed over $250 million in microfinance loans: low-interest finance and financial support services, designed to get people out of poverty and into a better place.

Ingrid Munro and Jamii Bora: A trained architect, Ingrid is a woman of the people and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Jamii Bora is Kenya’s largest microfinance operation and was all started in-house, powered by pure Munro vision. Jamii Bora has just been awarded SACCO status, so is setting up credit union branches all over Kenya!

Sam Daley-Harris and the Microcredit Summit: This partnership includes exposure and awareness at the Global Microcredit Summit, to be held in Spain in October 2011. The Microcredit Summit is a part of the Results Fund, which handles payment and tax-deductible donations for Race4Change at Race4Change.org/donate.

The Microcredit Summit was launched more than 15 years ago by Sam Daley-Harris: advocate for microcredit around the world, and an early supporter of Muhammad Yunus, the “father” of microcredit, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank. Its current objectives are to ensure that 175 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services by the end of 2015, and that 100 million families rise above the US$1 a day threshold, between 1990 and 2015.

Mary Ellen Iskenderian and Women’s World Banking: Head of Women’s World Banking, Mary Ellen heads one of the world’s most successful microfinance organizations. Mary Ellen will drive for us in 2011, to spread the gospel of women’s empowerment.

Women’s World Banking is the only microfinance network with an explicit focus on women. The WWB network of 39 financial organizations from 27 countries located around the world provide small loans, sometimes as modest as $100, to people to start their businesses. Women’s World Banking is focused on ensuring women have access to these microloans.