Recovery from the tsunami disaster: poverty reduction and sustainable development through microfinance

Special report, May 2005

More than 220,000 people dead in 12 countries and 1.6 million people displaced. Numbers alone cannot provide a true sense of the devastation wrought by the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Nor can numbers tell us what it will take for the region to recover. In the weeks that followed the tsunami, Grameen Foundation USA took immediate action by providing $25,000 to ASA, our long-time partner in Tamil Nadu, India, to support its innovative approach to participating in the immediate relief effort. The Jameel Group committed all of the funds required to undertake a comprehensive, multi-country survey to determine how microfinance could be best used in the post-tsunami recovery effort. This report synthesizes the lessons learned from the survey teams.