Inaugurated by Her Majesty Queen Sofia on October 26th, the Second European Microcredit Conference entitled "Microfinance for financial and social inclusion" was organised by EMN with the support of two of its Spanish members: Obra Social "La Caixa" and Fundacio Un Sol Mon de Caixa Catalunya and supported by the European Commission and the Levi Strauss Foundation.

During two days, Workshops and plenary sessions were hosted in "La Pedrera" and CosmoCaixa and dealt with various issues related to microfinance in Europe. The full programme of the Conference can now be downloaded here.

Topics of the workshops

• Workshop 1: "Scoring or not scoring your clients" (download the presentations of Bannock consulting, Finnvera, Prizma)
• Workshop 2: "More than a loan: Innovative ways to integrate your micro-entrepreneur into the business world" (download the presentation of Integra)
• Workshop 3: "Working with Immigrants in Europe; A new challenge for micro finance providers" (download the presentations of Facet, Adie and the Spanish Red Cross)
• Workshop 4: "How can international MFI's reach a balance between their social and financial objective" (download the presentation of AMSSFMC)
• Workshop 5: "Everything that you would like to know about microfinance" 
• Workshop 6: "Informal sector: Threat or opportunity?" (download the presentation of Fundacio Un Sol Mon)
• Workshop 7: "Transparency: Agreement on basic benchmarks in Europe?" (Download the presentations of Shorebank, McFin, the European Commission, DMI and CDFA)
• Workshop 8: "Closing the lending gap: are special programmes needed for Europe's female entrepreneurs?" (download the presentation of EMN, Finnvera, WEETU and Women's World Banking)

During the conference, the results of two EMN's recently released preliminary studies have been discussed: "Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Participation in microloan programmes in Western Europe" and "Female participation in microloan programmes in Western Europe".

The conference succeeded in promoting microfinance as an inclusion tool and improving microfinance services delivery to specific groups such as immigrants, ethnic minorities and women.

The report of participants' evaluations are now available on-line, along with the complete list of participants.

The minutes of the Conference are now available. This document includes a summary of all the workshops and plenary sessions of the conference (download here).