Working Capital for Community Needs (WCCN) is a nonprofit organization that organizes partnerships with individuals and organizations in Latin America and the U.S. to build sustainable economic opportunities that help people work their way out of poverty.
WCCN operates a microcredit investment program that channels funds from U.S. investors to provide financing for low-income Latin American entrepreneurs and small farmers so they can grow their operations and work their way out of poverty. WCCN also promotes fair trade, women's empowerment, and housing improvement initiatives. It also organizes study tours and other people-to-people exchanges between the United States and Latin America.
Founded in 1982, WCCN was originally called the "Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua" and was active in the US-Nicaragua "sister city" movement, which promoted people-to-people projects and locally based "municipal foreign policies" by individual U.S. cities as an alternative to the militaristic foreign policy of the U.S. government under President Ronald Reagan. Its microcredit program began in 1992, and in 2008 it began to diversity its lending activities to countries beyond Nicaragua. It changed its name to Working Capital for Community Needs in 2010.
WCCN has worked in partnership with microcredit broker-dealers such as MicroPlace but receives the majority of its investments from U.S. individuals, churches and impact investors.
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