CAWTAR has published this Directory of Institutions and NGOs specialized in poverty-reduction and micro-credit to address one of the most long-left needs for a regional medium to facilitate access to information of low- income women to available programs and services. Identifying these sources of information is at least a half-way to the solution. ; This is if we speak of the instances of illiteracy or lack of awareness as intertwined factors behind growing levels of wrenching poverty, and what we call the missed opportunities for low-income women to benefit from existing programs and services in order to improve their livelihoods.

The directory is also intended to become a tool for specialized programs and institutions to learn about each other activities and to explore opportunities for synergy to maximize the outreach of their programs to low-income targeted groups (be it community, families, women, men or children). It includes the objectives, activities and contacts of 350 institutions and NGOs in 22 Arab countries. In that way, it is hoped to reflect the diversified efforts aiming to reduce-poverty in the Arab region, and facilitate exchange of information in order for further plans to be oriented on informative knowledge of what has been done or underway by : national programs, charity-work and micro-credit services in the sphere of poverty-reduction among Arab women.

(Publication is in hard copy at CAWTAR)