HISTORY

In early 2000, a group of friends met to discuss how they could alleviate poverty. They discussed various economic development methodologies including education, microcredit, and cooperatives. These initial discussions led to the formation of Unitus Action Groups, where individuals brought friends, family, co-workers or neighbors together to unite their efforts in fighting poverty (hence our name: “unite us” became “Unitus”). Much good came from these Unitus Action Groups. Sizable donations were made to worthy NGOs worldwide. But for all their successes, the founders were still not convinced that they were realizing poverty alleviation on a sustainable, global scale.

In the context of this self-evaluation, they traveled to Bangladesh in January 2001 to learn about the Grameen Bank and meet with Muhammad Yunus, Grameen’s founder. The trip changed their lives. It left them convinced that microcredit was the key to large-scale poverty alleviation. But a question still remained: With thousands of microfinance institutions (MFIs) already in existence, how could Unitus best support and leverage microcredit and microfinance? And could Unitus really reach scale quickly if it was constrained by building a field support organization from scratch? Wouldn’t it just be duplicating and overlapping efforts if it created an MFI of its own?

With advice from Muhammad Yunus and further research, the group moved in a new direction and began to explore the microfinance industry in-depth—its successes, failures, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. After months of evaluation, a new strategy was developed for Unitus, one that could truly alleviate poverty for millions of people: the Unitus Acceleration Model.

Many of those founding friends are still Unitus board members. They remain as committed as ever to alleviating worldwide poverty on a massive scale.