Montreal Community Loan Association

ACEM exists since 1987 and has been incorporated as a charitable organisation in 1990. ACEM has also been registered as a charitable organisation with Revenue Canada and Revenu Québec. ACEM grew out of a grassroots initiative of ten organisations, representing the unemployed youth, immigrants, refugees, single-parent families with woman as head of the family, people on welfare. It aimed at addressing the structural causes of poverty in the Grand Plateau district of Montreal. The organization was conceived based on the Community Loan Fund (CLF) model that has flourished in the United States since the early 1980s. The Massachusetts-based Institute for Community Economics (ICE), one of North America's leaders in developing innovative community investment strategies, provided the initial training and technical support needed to get ACEM's community loan fund up and running. The CLF model involves borrowing from socially responsible investors at a very low interest rate and then re-lending that money at a slightly higher rate to community organizations. ACEM's mission is to fight poverty and exclusion through an innovative approach: community credit. ACEM provides accessible credit and technical support to individuals living on a low income and to organizations that do not have access to traditional forms of credit for the start up or expansion of their community or business project. ACEM targets low income persons living on Montreal Island particularly, single parent women, youth and people from a visible minority, immigrant or cultural community. Fundamentally, all of ACEM's work in the community is geared towards capacity building among low income populations on the Island of Montreal. The loans and the technical support we provide are the means used to build this capacity.