FINCA International - Celebrity Support

Celebrity Support

In 2003, Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan accepted an invitation from FINCA International to join its board of directors, formalizing a relationship of support and advocacy that began in 2000. In accepting the invitation, the Queen reaffirmed her belief in FINCA's vision that microfinance institutions offer a tangible means of providing large numbers of the world's poorest a real stake in their societies. On February 25, 2008, Queen Rania officially inaugurated the FINCA Jordan program and personally visited its clients.

International film actress Natalie Portman joined FINCA as its "Ambassador of Hope" in 2003, following a meeting with Queen Rania. About the meeting, she explains, "Because I'm Israeli and Queen Rania is probably the most high-profile Palestinian woman in the world, I had this dream of meeting with her and doing something that would promote peace and working together between Israeli and Palestinian women. She talked to me a lot about what she calls the 'hope gap' that exists between the one third of the world that has and the two thirds that do not. I wasn't even aware that two thirds of the world population are extremely poor, living on less than a dollar a day, and that 70 percent of those people are women and children. It's not something they teach you in school in the States". Since then, Portman has visited FINCA field projects in Mexico, Guatemala, Uganda, and Ecuador, and met with several members of Congress to argue for more government funding for microfinance ventures. Portman appeared in the documentary "FINCA Mexico: Stories of Hope", chronicling her visit to the FINCA program in Mexico. The film was directed by Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winner documentary director Juan Carlos Rulfo. Portman created the film to provide FINCA supporters a more in-depth view of the program and to showcase the lives of FINCA clients.

Of her trip to Uganda, Portman recalls, "...in Uganda I met a woman named Efuwa who was one of the first clients of FINCA in Uganda 11 years ago and she—when she started she had 10 children. Her husband was beating her, she was on 80-cents a day and she was—she was telling us how she would borrow dirty laundry water from her neighbors to—to clean her clothes because—and her children’s clothes because she couldn’t even afford a little bit of soap. Now 11 years later, she’s opened up a restaurant. Her loans are up to $2,000 now because she’s been such a--you know reliable client. She hired seven other women. She sends all of her daughters to school. One of them is in University now; they like all pooled their money together to—to send the smartest one to University and it’s just amazing the—the amount of responsibility and pride that these women who have no education and virtually no hope can take with themselves with just a little bit of input."