Accion history

July 15, 1964 (aged 66) Montevideo Uruguay (Anniversary in 3 days)

A 1969 annual report explains, “Accion’s projects are a vehicle by which the people of the slums have been able to become full participants in the life of their country.”

In 1973, Accion staff in Recife, Brazil, began to focus their efforts on helping informal businesses.

The class produced a bilingual newspaper, which they named El Tecolote (The Owl). In 1982, our then-grassroots group, run entirely by volunteers, produced the first Encuentro del Canto Popular, a three-day music festival highlighting the musical genre of Nueva Canción from Latin America.

Acción Latina incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1987, but our work serving Latinos in San Francisco through community media and cultural arts programming began long before that.

Farnsworth, Clyde H., “Micro-Loans to the World’s Poorest,” New York Times, February 21, 1988, Sec.

Since 1991, the members of Accion in the United States have provided more than 60,000 loans to enterprising small business owners and disbursed more than $500 million in capital.

Founded in Bolivia in 1992, BancoSol was established to serve the poor, with its clients typically market vendors, sandal makers, and seamstresses.

ACCION Texas began in 1994 by making loans in San Antonio, armed with a $50,000 grant and $125,000 to lend.

In 1996 ACCION New York became the first microcredit organization to sell a package of loans to an investor.

By 1997, this program had 344 active borrowers who had taken out a total of $1.4 million in loans.

Another notable partner was Banco de la Microempresa S.A. (Mibanco), founded in 1998 as Peru’s first for-profit, fully regulated commercial bank dedicated to microenterprise.

In 1999 revenue from interest and fees paid 45 percent of the organization’s operating costs, with the remainder covered by grants.

In October 2000, Accion began working in partnership with microlending organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, marking its first initiative outside the Americas.

By the end of 2003, the United States ACCION Network had lent more than $90 million to more than 10,000 low-income entrepreneurs in over 30 cities and towns across these nine states.

Hendricks, David, “Accion Texas Gets Proof of Its Impact,” San Antonio Express-News, August 28, 2004.

In 2006, Accion launched a landmark partnership with Ecobank, the leading regional bank in West Africa.

Pan-African Savings and Loans (then called EB-Accion Savings and Loans) launched operations in Ghana in 2007 and is expanding to neighboring countries.

In particular, Accion established the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI) in 2008 as an “action tank” focused on advancing the commercial model of microfinance while upholding the interests and needs of poor clients worldwide.

In December 2009, Accion inaugurated Accion Microfinance China (AMC) in Chifeng Prefecture, Inner Mongolia; this microfinance institution represented the first wholly-owned foreign microcredit company (MCC), and only the second wholly foreign-owned MCC in the country.

In April 2012, Accion launched Accion Venture Lab, its seed-stage impact investment initiative in fintech for the underserved.

In March 2017, Accion announced the launch of the first global fintech fund for the underserved: the Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, managed by Quona Capital.