Hollywood Actress Natalie Portman Meets Annette Brooke About Microfinance
June 3, 2005 9:00 PM
Natalie Portman with Annette Brooke, Lawrence Yanovitch and Sheila Davey
Annette Brooke, MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, took time out of her busy constituency schedule to return to London for a meeting with the 'Star Wars' actress Natalie Portman.
Natalie, who is an ambassador for the American microfinance charity "Finca" and is currently filming her new movie 'V for Vendetta' in and around Parliament Square, spent the morning in meetings with enterprise development specialists at DfID (the Department for International Development) and Annette Brooke, who is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Microfinance.
Over tea on the House of Commons terrace, Natalie spoke of how she was inspired to do advocacy work for the organisation "Finca - small loans, big changes", which is supported by Queen Rania of Jordan, as she wanted to do something useful to help society, the developing world and people and families living in poverty. Microfinance can help the very poorest people to become self-sufficient and particularly, can empower women and their children.
After Tea on the Terrace
Natalie, who has visited various projects around the world, told of how she was most impressed that all the women beneficiaries of microfinance projects pledged to use their earnings and savings to ensure that their children went to school. Most women consider schooling the best security for their children's future.
Annette Brooke said: "Microfinance as a poverty reduction development tool is unfortunately little understood or recognised by many international development organisations, and yet just small 'micro' amounts of money can change lives.
"It is excellent to have the support of such a well known celebrity to raise the profile of microfinance. Natalie has visited successful projects and has brought back positive messages of microfinance working well around the world. We want to convince DfID and the G8 countries that microfinance can be used effectively to meet the Millennium Development Goals."
Together with Lawrence Yanovitch, Director of Finca, and Sheila Davie from Results UK, Annette and Natalie discussed ways of further putting microfinance and its success at alleviating poverty of the very poorest, higher on the government's agenda - both in terms of the Africa Commission and the G8 conference and more generally in the UK Parliament and US Congress. DfID is very supportive of microfinance as an anti-poverty tool, but is having to cut funding to microfinance projects due to general lack of resources and priorities.
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