Friends Life

Who We Are

Friends Life is a non government organization that was established in September 2009.Friends Life is the only organization in Pakistan that works exclusively to reduce poverty and generate opportunity in the developing world through the charity concert and Shows on The Friends FM Online Radio Station.Friends Life seeks to end hunger and poverty by empowering people to lead lives of self-reliance, meet their own basic needs and build better futures for their children.

What We Do

Friends Life helps the world’s poorest, especially women, improve their lives and escape poverty by providing them with access to small loans, essential information, and viable business opportunities. Through two of the most effective tools known – small loans and the mobile phone – we work to make a real difference in the lives of those who have been left behind: poor people, especially those living on less than 100Pak Rupees per day.

Our Mission

Friends Life is a global, non-profit, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.

In Pakistan and South Asia, Friends Life Project seeks to end hunger and poverty by empowering people to lead lives of self-reliance, meet their own basic needs and build better futures for their children.

Friends Life carries out its mission through three essential activities: mobilizing village clusters at the grassroots level to build self-reliance, empowering women as key change agents, and forging effective partnerships with local government.

Vision

Our vision of the future is not based on everyone achieving a high-consumption lifestyle, which is environmentally unsustainable. Nor does it permit one-sixth of the human family to continue to live in abject poverty. The Friends Life is committed to transcending this polarity and creating a future that rejects the inevitability of hunger and recognizes the limitations of a consumerist society Achieving the sustainable end of hunger means creating a new future for all humanity, a future where every day, every person has enough of the right food to be healthy and productive;babies are born healthy and strong, and girl babies are prized as much as boy babies; children stay alive, so parents can have smaller families; women and girls are full partners in society;people have control over their own lives and destinies, and all individuals have a chance to contribute; and the values of honoring human beings and nature flourish.

Where We Work

Pakistan has had a turbulent last couple of years with economic shocks as well as rise of extremism. Poor people suffer disproportionately due to these shocks but we envision that positive forces of microfinance and technology will help mitigate them. We envision that by 2015, large-scale microfinance institutions (MFIs) will provide 10 million poor people in Pakistan with a wide range of financial services to empower them to move out and stay out of poverty.
Nearly one in five Pakistanis, or 27 million people, is living below the poverty line, earning less than 200Pkr/day.
Approximately 37 million Pakistanis—more than 1 in 5 people—live on less than 100Pkr per day.
MFIs reach only about two percent of Pakistan’s poorest households.
Undernourishment affects 37 million people.
Nearly 10 percent of children will not live to the age of five.

Pakistan has suffered from decades of internal political disputes, low levels of foreign investment, and ongoing costly confrontation with neighboring India that have all made escaping poverty even more of a challenge. As a relatively new and emerging sector in the development industry in Pakistan, microfinance has a tremendous potential for growth in the coming years. The majority of MFIs in Pakistan are small and in need of basic support in financial management, human resource management and technology management to prepare them to scale up and reach the poorest population.

Take Action

Become a Monthly Sustaining Donor
Help the Poor Break the Cycle of Poverty

Your gift to Friends Life Organization will help us provide the world’s poorest – especially women – with access to tiny loans to start small businesses and access to vital mobile phone-based information and business opportunities, enabling them to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

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