For any young African entrepreneur who could use $250,000 or so, Agnes Dasewicz has a message.

"I was talking to a woman who started a travel agency in Mali. She said, 'Because I'm young, because I don't have a big house to put up for a loan, because I'm a woman, I cannot get any financing from any bank,'" said Dasewicz, whose organization, the Grassroots Business Fund, provides loans to small business owners. "So this is the gap that we're trying to fill."

Dasewicz spread her message among the 115 young people from more than 40 African nations who were delegates to the President's Forum with Young African Leaders, held in Washington on August 3-5. On the last day of the forum, at what was called the UnConference, they were meeting with representatives of companies, nonprofit groups and other interested organizations. Many of the delegates work in education, health, human rights and other fields, but some are entrepreneurs, and Dasewicz was looking for those who want loans to build small businesses into larger ones. As chief operating officer of her Washington-based organization, that's her mission.

"We support small businesses in developing countries," she said. Developing countries typically focus on microfinance, which gives small loans to people who generally have no access to banks, and on larger corporations, she said, but "small and middle companies are really not growing because they don't have the right resources."

With funds from the World Bank and private philanthropists and foundations in the United States, the Grassroots Business Fund provides capital and know-how to grow so that entrepreneurs, in turn, can succeed and invest in business ideas in their countries, just as entrepreneurs invested in such U.S. companies as FedEx and Apple when those companies were getting started.

Med Ssengooba, a delegate from Uganda, was exploring the conference room for contacts and information, not necessarily money. As administrator of Legal Action for Persons with Disabilities, which pushes for the rights of disabled people, he was asking nonprofit groups whether their work includes disability rights. "Some of them have said that they are working in Uganda with rights generally and would be honored to partner with us," he said.

Ssengooba said that, like other delegates, he considered it his responsibility to use the occasion to improve the lives of people in his country, and not simply in the field in which he works. As one of three delegates from Uganda, he said, he was making contacts for other organizations and activists back home; and as someone who uses a wheelchair, he was asking fellow delegates about disability rights throughout Africa. "I've requested them already to become my lead agents in their respective countries," he said. "I've taken a lot of contacts."

Kim Smith made contacts with many of the delegates, too, but for a different reason: She hopes to make them famous, at least in a small way. As deputy field director for ONE, a grass-roots organization based in Washington, she mobilizes advocacy against extreme poverty and the spread of preventable diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa. The young African leaders are hopeful and appealing success stories, and Smith knows that success sells.

"We can highlight some of the groups that are here, work on our website to give them an audience in America as well as show Americans, 'Look at these awesome things that are being done on the ground in Africa,'" Smith said. "Things are working. There is so much hope and there is so much opportunity to really do things like combat HIV and AIDS and work on transparency in governance and malaria, and to show those really neat, creative, locally grown solutions."

ONE has two goals in publicizing the success stories in the fight against poverty and disease, Smith said: to foster the spread of approaches that work and to generate support for them in government and the public. ONE demonstrates "that there are amazing successes: American dollars are working in saving lives, in being effective around the world."

Smith's group also makes grants available through its ONE Africa Award and offers advice and connections to help its partners do their job.