Founded in 1995, the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) supports the efforts of more than 300 grassroots, community-based partner organizations throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. FSD programs provide multi-faceted support that relies on active community participation to mobilize lasting solutions. FSD programs include:

Capacity Building: Our professional field staff provides on-site training and networking opportunities to more than 300 community-based organizations world-wide.

Training Programs Abroad: FSD provides comprehensive training and immersion programs for interns and volunteers who seek hands-on development experience.

Grantmaking: Donations and grants given to FSD are used to support sustainable projects led by our partner organizations

Engaged Philanthropy: FSD Giving Circles organize groups of donors who pool their time, talent, and resources to make international grants to our partner organizations.



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Intern with FSD in microfinance to empower mariginalized and impoverished communities. Along with credit lending, FSD trains entrepreneurs in how to effectively integrate credit management and savings principles into their business growth. Since traditional lending does not reach underserved communities, microfinance offers a collective solution that lends small increments of capital to local businesses.

To help micro-entrepreneurs increase sales and profitability, FSD works to expand access to local and international markets through relationship building, research, and strategic development. By addressing these prominent needs—training, microfinance, and access to markets—FSD and its partner organizations provide economic opportunity at the community level.

FSD has worked in: Community Empowerment, Building Social Capital, Infrastructure Development, Construction, Building, Planning, Micro-Credit, Lending Groups, Entrepreneurship, Business Development, and New Enterprises.

Our partner organizations work in nine regions throughout Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Kenya, Uganda and India.

FSD works with a variety of local organizations to provide training and economic opportunity to communities that lack sufficient job skills. Interns work with FSD to provide programs that:

• Educate the general public and distribute information to local agencies about the advantages of ecotourism to increase vendor and consumer awareness and ensure a more sustainable use of Argentina's vast natural resources.

• Provide consulting for local organizations to help them more effectively manage and utilize resources.

• Support a cooperative of small businesses led by marginalized families who offer cleaning, masonry work, gardening, painting, plumbing, and electrical work to the general public.

• Provide at-risk youth and uneducated persons with resources and guidance to integrate with the working community and find employment through training on local job skills, microenterprise strategies, and microcredit opportunities.

• Work to improve production techniques for small and medium enterprises that support unemployed women and youth. For example, FSD volunteers and interns have assisted production and/or marketing of fruits and vegetables dehydrated by solar and Eolic energy. The programs aim to reduce poverty and unemployment.

For more information: http://www.fsdinternational.org/devsubject/microfinance

Fill out an application here: http://fsdinternational.org/apply/application