What better way to celebrate your wedding day than by sharing your happiness with those who most need it? That is what Sybille Dubois-Fontaine and Peter Turner chose to do when they married in the south of France this summer. Instead of wedding presents, they encouraged their friends and family to give a donation to Mercy Corps. Both lawyers, they chose to support Mercy Corps' micro-credit program for women in Uzbekistan. Donations have been pouring in, with well over £3000 received already.

The micro-credit programs are a highly successful way of helping Uzbek women earn a living in an environment, which often stifles any form of entrepreneurialism.

The micro-credit programs are a highly successful way of helping Uzbek women earn a living in an environment, which often stifles any form of entrepreneurialism. The programme works by providing small loans, between £20 and £100, to groups of six to ten women who guarantee payment on each other's loans. The responsibility of each member of the group for each woman's progress has helped to ensure a 100 percent loan repayment rate. But the real success of these programs is that the women can rebuild their lives and support their families again without relying on hand outs. In fact, the micro-credit programme is so popular that there are long waiting lists of groups wanting to apply. Sybille and Peter chose to support this particular project as they see it as "a fantastic concept, which provides a real future for the women involved."

We would like to congratulate Sybille and Peter on their recent marriage, and to say a big thank you to them for so generously remembering and supporting the women in Uzbekistan. Their friends' donations have provided much needed opportunities for many Uzbek women and their families at a time when they can find little support elsewhere.

To learn how one woman's life was changed due to a micro-credit program see A Breath of New Life.