• The U.S. government defines "microenterprise" as a firm of 10 or fewer employees (including unpaid family workers) that is owned and operated by someone who is poor.
  
  
• The Microenterprise for Self-Reliance Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000, mandates that half of all USAID microenterprise funds go to the very poor, currently defined as those living on less than $1 a day, or those determined to be in the bottom half of the population living below their country's poverty line.
  
  
• The U.S. government strategy for supporting microenterprise development centers on policy and regulatory reforms that support conditions for business development, access to business development services, and delivery of microfinance.
  
  
• In Thailand, micro and small enterprises comprise more than 97 percent of all firms in the manufacturing and trade/service sectors. Micro firms generate 71 percent of total employment in the service/trade sector.
  In Bangladesh, more than 90 percent of the firms engaged in the $350 million shrimp export business are microbusinesses.
  
  
• USAID's average annual funding for microenterprise over the past five years has exceeded $160 million. This support reached more than 3.7 million microentrepreneurs in fiscal year 2002, more that two-thirds of whom are women.
  
  
• In South Africa, 87,000 of the 90,000 firms in the construction sector are micro- and small-scale enterprises.
  
  
• The UN General Assembly designated 2005 as the International Year of Microcredit and has invited governments, the United Nations system, concerned nongovernmental organizations, and others from civil society, the private sector, and the media to join in raising the profile and building the capacity of the microcredit and microfinance sectors.

» SEE: United Nations Vision and Mission Statement for Building Inclusive Financial Sectors

Job 34:17-19 "Can he who hates justice govern? Will you condemn the just and mighty One?
Is he not the One who says to kings, 'You are worthless,' and to nobles, 'You are wicked,' who shows no partiality to princes and does not favor the rich over the poor, for they are all the work of his hands?”

Psalm 140:12 “I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”

Isaiah 25:4 “You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall.”

Isaiah 41:17 “The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.”

Jeremiah 9:23-24 “This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the LORD.”

Luke 4:16-21 “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…