Citi Highlights Microfinance Photographic Contest

The distinguished photographer Cornell Capa once described photographers who used their work to change the world as "concerned photographers." Citi Microfinance, working to expand access to financial services for the underserved, partnered with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), part of the World Bank Group, to help tell the world about microfinance, the people it serves and how it is touching the lives of poor people.

Click on http://www.citi.com/citi/microfinance to view this year's award winning photographs that are currently displayed in Citi Centre, Canary Wharf, London, and will soon be displayed New York. The exhibit highlights Citi's long commitment to microfinance and celebrates the extraordinary ingenuity, creativity, and hard work of microentrepreneurs.

As one of the judges of the competition, along with National Geographic Senior Picture Editor, Reuters and others, I found the photographs illustrated striking images of the impact and wide variety of clients and micro enterprises served by microfinance.

Amateur photographer Somenath Mukhopadhyay, a teacher in West Bengal, India, won first place in a competition of more than 700 entries from professional and nonprofessional photographers from 40 countries all over the world.

We hope these images will help to convey to the wider public and to colleagues across Citi the message of microfinance, and tell the story of this movement and industry, its unique ability to reach and to serve a diverse and dynamic majority in many of our communities, the poor and the underserved, as clients, rather than beneficiaries.

Visit http://www.citi.com/citi/microfinance to learn details about how Citi Microfinance serves more than 100 microfinance institutions (MFIs), networks and investors as clients in over 40 countries with products and services spanning the financial spectrum – from financing, access to capital markets, transaction services and hedging foreign exchange risk, to credit, savings, remittances and insurance products.

Bob Annibale
Global Director
Citi Microfinance