Nobel laureate and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus will join 2,000 delegates in Halifax for the launching of Phase 2 of the campaign with two new goals, a press release of the summit issued from Washington yesterday said.

The goals are reaching 175 million of the world's poorest families with microcredit and ensuring 100 million families to rise above the US$1 a day threshold, lifting 500 million people out of extreme poverty.

The campaign was launched in 1997, and the overall growth between 1997 and 2005 has been significant.

The organiser of the summit announced that more than 113 million clients received small loans last year to start or expand small business, 82 million of them were among the world's poorest people.

Globally, 847 micro finance practitioners submitted their data in 2006 of which 88 percent of all the poorest clients were reported.

The 2006 report includes data gathered from more than 3,100 institutions worldwide and finds that of the 82 million poorest, 84 percent are women.

Loans are used for a wide range of business activities including low-tech ventures such as selling milk and eggs, making tortillas or producing handicrafts, as well as high-tech enterprises like selling solar-powered cellular phone in rural areas without land-line phone service.

Following the Grameen Model, a host of micro-finance institutions (MFIs) have been built up in Bangladesh.