Adie Microcredit
Experiences

Adie, microcredit specialist in France

16 June Jun 2017 1414 16 June 2017
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Adie is the pioneering association for microcredit in France and the largest in the country. Born in 1989, it creates more than 200 new jobs a week and counts 450 employees and 13,000 volunteers.

France’s pioneering association for microcredit is called Adie (an acronym that stands for Association for the Right to Economic Initiative). Established in 1989, it helps people excluded from the labour market and the bank system to create their own enterprise and therefore their job thanks to microcredit.

The association adapts to France the principle of microcredit, a financial mechanism inspired to Grameen Bank created in Bangladesh by prof. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize 2006.

Adie creates more than 200 new jobs a week and counts 120 offices all over France, 450 employees and 13,000 volunteers.

Among the main goals of Adie there are first of all to finance aspiring entrepreneurs who don’t have access to bank loans thanks to microcredit with loans that reach 10,000 euros. Secondly, support aspiring entrepreneurs before, after and during the creation of their enterprise. Adie offers dedicated support to young people from 18 to 32 years old. Thanks to 1300 volunteers who commit daily, the association also proposes a free and quality support. This support also consists in shared or personalised training. Finally among the goals there are to do advocacy for a more adapted legal environment to microcredit in France.

Adie offers a series of services that go from “Start up grants” financed by the French government or by local authorities, to financing, to micro-insurance schemes to protect micro entrepreneurs and their business; to microfranchising (a form of social enterprise inspired by franchising), that aims to propose to people excluded from the labour market, with little or no professional qualifications, the creation of turn-key micro businesses. Finally Adie’s staff and volunteers provide a wide range of services for the development of one-to-one businesses to microentrepreneurs, like business planning, mentoring, administrative procedures, marketing and legal advice.

Photo by Providence Doucet/Unsplash