> Posted by Center Staff
The Smart Campaign is pleased to announce the launch of its Russian-language site, which rounds out a suite of English, Spanish, and French sites already online.
“We’re excited about communicating our client protection message directly in Russian, which has 285 million native and non-native speakers,” said Smart Campaign Director Isabelle Barrès. “We’re especially grateful to The MasterCard Foundation for supporting this work, and for the help of the Russian Microfinance Center in bringing about this important breakthrough.”
The site presents the fundamentals of the Smart Campaign, including the mission and goals, the Client Protection Principles, and answers to frequently asked questions. It also presents the Campaign’s Steering Committee and a comprehensive list of endorsers.
Most importantly, the new site lays out exactly how microfinance institutions, their associations, investors and donors, and support organizations and individuals can endorse the Campaign and take suitable client protection actions.
The site offers visitors tools including “Conducting Client Protection Assessments: A Guide” and the “Getting Started Questionnaire: A Client Protection Self-Assessment for Microfinance Institutions.” More tools in Russian will be rolled out as they are submitted in that language or translated.
Soon to follow the new Russian site will be one in Arabic.
“Roughly 2.9 billion people speak Russian, English, French, Arabic or Spanish,” said Barrès. “If we can reach even a tiny percentage of 2.9 billion by making the Smart Campaign’s tools and messages available online, that’s a lot of people.”
