Three female journalists from Uganda, South Africa and Sri Lanka are the winners of the 2005 IPS/IFAD Award for Microfinance Reporting. Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura, Christina Scott and Chandani Jayatilleke will each receive a cash prize of 1,000 USD.

IPS news agency and IFAD, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, created the 2005 Reporting Microfinance Award to increase media attention to the issue, recognising the United Nations designation of 2005 as the International Year of Microcredit.

The Members of the international jury were Ferial Haffajee, Editor, Mail and Guardian, South Africa, Farhana Haque Rahman, Chief, Media Relations, Special Events and Programmes, IFAD and Miren Gutierrez, Chief Editor, IPS News Agency

Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura’s story written from Masaka in southern Uganda explains small-scale loans that help families that care for AIDS orphans. The story focused on the pancake and doughnut business that has helped one client, a widow, to support her own six children, and six others orphaned by the pandemic.

The judges commended her for taking the reader “into the heart of the Aids pandemic”, analysing both how microcredit can help to alleviate the consequences of the disease and how it poses a challenge to the sustainability of loan repayment.

Read more about the award here:
www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/microcredit/award.asp