Maaroopha "Maa" Abdulkadir is actively participating in the Mindanao peace process as a young professional advocate. She is a proponent for the development of Islamic Finance is banking as well as rural community empowerment. Maa has worked in grassroots efforts to improve opportunities for rural small scale entrepreneurs bringing native products to market. She has also worked with farmers on financial literacy--translating financial parlance to simplified terms easily understood by the farmers. As a young ambassador of peace, she has seen the correlation of economic development to the progress of the peace process and how it drives the empowerment of local farmers to enter the market. Maa is a strong believer in change starting at the community level cascading to broader market.

Five-Year Project Goals:

• To decrease the poverty incidence at least 10% from now and increase banking services for farmers and entrepreneurs.

Organization Information: Baytul Amanah

The project aims to build capacity in rural communities by educating farmers and small scale entrepreneurs in financial literacy. This project will train and develop technical capacity in these communities by focusing on record keeping, decision making and resource allocation to expand and avail financial services in the market.