Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Rural Advancement Programme

The programme is directly supervised by IFAD. Its aim is to reduce the incidence of poverty among rural women and men in a sustainable and gender-equitable way by improving their access to information, technology, rural financial services and markets. The programme pursues the goal of achieving sustainable improvements in poor rural people’s social and economic conditions. It introduces innovative measures for reducing poverty and modules that can be scaled up in the future. It contributes directly to the ongoing reform of the rural banking system.

Target groups include people who are absolutely poor and people in low-income households, particularly households headed by women. People in these groups have low skill levels and limited access to financial resources.

The principal objectives of the programme are to:

• improve farmers’ production and market access by increasing agricultural and livestock development, organic farming, and extension and market access support services
• provide strategic support to women for income-generating activities through formation of village-based women’s microcredit groups and township-based women’s associations
• support rural financial services through microfinance development, strengthening and scaling up grass-roots rural finance cooperatives and mainstreaming successful microcredit schemes
   

Source: IFAD