The Role of Micro Credit and NGOs in Economic Development

The role of NGOs should be to foster the emergence of a world wide civil society, the first step towards making globalization a more democratic affair. NGOs were not born yesterday, but the rising number of conflicts that have reverberated in recent decades around a world globalized in the neo-liberal mould has led them to multiply and diversify into highly visible bodies. Who are the main players in this process of globalization? Governments (politics) and the market (the economy) are the twin pillars supporting the productive systems and structures of modern societies. So who has the legitimate right to change them? The societies themselves, for they alone are made up of citizens grouped together as a people, a nation or a country. The right does not belong to governments, state structures, corporate executives or markets. This is why, as NGOs, our attention is directed at civil society itself. At the global level, our basic task is to foster the emergence of a worldwide civil society as a precondition to calling for a new style of globalization: ‘world governance’. Our mission is to encourage the re-founding of globalization along more democratic lines by taking part in public debate and promulgating the concept of world citizenship. The political stances we take and our lobbying activities, therefore, do not come out of the blue, but are efforts to transmit the main currents and aspirations of public opinion and make this opinion stronger and clearer.