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> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of Top Picks features three posts that each highlight an initiative with the potential to further inform financial inclusion efforts. These initiatives include an entrepreneurial assistance program for women in post-war Uganda, a project that explored the effectiveness of microfinance providers offering health services, and an interactive workshop on impact evaluation.
- What’s the best way to help the poor in the aftermath of war? A new post on the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) blog highlights the recent release of findings from a program that provided entrepreneurial assistance – business training, start-up money, ongoing support and monitoring – to women in northern Uganda. The assistance led to increases in business activity and decreases in poverty, but did not have an effect on non-economic areas, such as physical and mental health. The program was conducted by IPA, Italian NGO AVSI Uganda, and Chris Blattman of Columbia University.
- In his latest post on The Evidence Project, Chris Dunford shares the results of Freedom from Hunger’s Microfinance and Health Protection (MAHP) initiative, which sought to test the feasibility and impact of offering microfinance clients health education, as well as access to health services and products. Five large-scale microfinance providers participated in the initiative, developing health protection packages for their clients. The results from the initiative support a case for the effectiveness of integrating microfinance and health services.
- Re-Evaluating Impact Evaluation, a new Next Billion post from Hui Wen Chan of the Citi Foundation, revisits a recent impact evaluation workshop and shares some of the key discussion points from the event. Arguably the most salient of these being think beyond the financial, consider both the economic and non-economic impacts of your products or services. Another key point shared in the post is the integrity of data depends both on the questions asked and the manner in which they are asked. The workshop was provided by the William Davidson Institute (WDI) and hosted by the Citi Foundation in New York City.
> Posted by Center Staff
Financial inclusion efforts often emerge in places you wouldn’t expect. For this edition of Top Picks, we spotlight a few of these unsuspecting areas – financial services to support farmer migration, early stage impact investing – and share research on one of the inclusion community’s hottest topics: mobile money.
- Subsistence farmers in regions with long off-seasons face an essential question: Do you stay put and stretch incomes to withstand unproductive periods, or do you migrate during off-seasons to find temporary labor? A new post on the Financial Access Initiative (FAI) Blog highlights recent research from the Centre for Economic Policy Research on the potential for financial services to help farmers overcome the risks associated with migrating and attain supplemented incomes. The researchers found that offering a conditional cash or credit incentive for farmers to migrate nearly doubled their likelihood of migration, and that a large portion of these migraters continued doing so after the incentive was removed. Many of the surveyed reported forming relationships with their temporary employers and returning to work for them in subsequent off-seasons.
- The perception that there is a lack of investable opportunities is hampering the growth of the impact investing industry, according to Paul Breloff in a new Next Billion post. Managing Director of Accion Venture Lab, Breloff brings attention to recent reports from JP Morgan and Village Capital revealing this sentiment, and shares the investing approach of Venture Lab, which has yielded a strong pipeline of investable companies. Venture Lab’s three-prong strategy is invest earlier, tolerate more uncertainty, and concentrate on big-picture priorities over returns. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
With so much activity in the financial inclusion sphere these days, Top Picks had plenty of great blogs to consider sharing this week. Three posts stood out to us though, covering the areas of adolescent empowerment, new biometric identification technology research, and electronic government-to-person (G2P) payments.
- Adolescent women in Uganda are improving their economic situation and are living healthier lives, thanks to BRAC Uganda’s Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents ELA Program. A new post on the Kiva blog shares the results from an independent impact study revealing that the ELA program is attaining significant success. The program results in a 35 percent increase in likelihood that an adolescent girl would be engaged in an income-generating activity, a 13 percent increase in condom use among sexually active participants, and an 83 percent decrease in participants’ reports of having sex unwillingly. Over 40,000 women have been reached by the program. Kiva offers loans to program participants. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
Top Picks is back from a long hiatus with posts on incorporating behavioral economics into financial service design, the potential for academic research in financial inclusion efforts, and the importance of quality data.
- A new post on Next Billion from Jake Kendall of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offers insight into how behavioral economics can be used to improve money management. The post shares work from Ignacio Mas and Colin Meyer on building optimum mobile user-interfaces, includes a study on the effectiveness of basic finance heuristics over formal accounting training, and explores the potential of algorithms that interpret clients’ unique behaviors to better guide them towards financial goals. Read the rest of this entry »
>Posted by Center Staff
There is great concern in the microfinance world and beyond regarding government efforts to take over Grameen Bank. Todd Bernhardt, Director of Marketing and Communications at the Grameen Foundation, has written a thorough and thoughtful summary of the latest developments as part of the Grameen Foundation blog. The post begins:
As you might have read in the news this week, the Bangladeshi government seems to be moving into the end game in its longtime effort to take over Grameen Bank, a move that has been widely criticized within Bangladesh and around the world. To brie
fly summarize, the cabinet – presided over by Prime Minister Sheik Hasina – voted on Thursday to amend the Grameen Bank Ordinance of 1983, effectively removing the Board of Directors’ right to choose the Bank’s Managing Director, and vesting that power instead in the Board’s government-appointed (and aligned) chairman…
To continue reading the rest of the article on the Grameen Foundation blog, please click here.
Image credit: banglanews24.com
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U.S. Women Senators Unite in Support of the Women of Grameen Bank
>Posted by Sergio Guzman
Today, we link to Accion Ambassador Juan Rubio’s post describing a social rating by Planet Rating at El Comercio in Paraguay.
Juan starts out with an interesting question–is measuring social performance similar to measuring love? How can it be quantified? Indeed, social performance can be an abstract concept and at times it seems a bit difficult to measure. However, there are Social Performance Standards have been specially designed in order to give us a better idea how MFIs are working not only towards the idea of improving clients life, but also making sure that their products are not making them any worse off.
Now, with some markets showing signs of saturation, managing social performance goals might be secondary for some bottom line focused institutions who might want to focus on their core business. Notwithstanding, this has proven to be a differentiating factor for many microfinance institutions like El Comercio who see this as a strategic objective. Or as we call it, Smart Microfinance.
Read the rest of Juan’s excellent post here and further stories from the field through the Accion Ambassadors blog.
Image credit:pastorgraphics.com
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> Posted by Center Staff
Last week, New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof spotlighted Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) and their power to give clients hope. He cites the story of one woman, Biti Rose, who gets a loan of $2 and starts selling doughnuts for 2 cents each. She makes a few dollars in profit each day and eventually begins to improve her life. Kristof admits that her story is not everyone’s. He does offer a nuanced picture of Biti’s story, however, using Banerjee and Duflo’s Poor Economics, positing that microfinance works because it offers the hope that people need to get themselves out of self-destructive pathologies.
The post begins:
If you want to understand some of the best new ideas to chip away at global poverty, an excellent place to start is the Nasoni family hut here in the southern African nation of Malawi. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of Top Picks features a post by Jessica Schicks on over-indebtedness and the consequences of repayment pressures, an important decision by the IMF to expand its focus, and a post that discusses the importance of good governance for social enterprises.
- Jessica Schicks recently wrote a post, “Over-Indebtedness in Microfinance – Who Should Bear the Risk?” for the CGAP Microfinance blog that discusses some of the risks associated with microcredit, specifically those related to over-indebtedness and repayment pressures. This post also reveals some of the very interesting findings from Schicks 2011 publication, Over-Indebtedness of Microborrowers in Ghana.
Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
In continuing our efforts to engage effectively with industry experts and a broad global community, we at the Center for Financial Inclusion are excited to announce the launch of the Center’s newly redesigned and revamped blog and website!
With the new sites, we hope to keep supporters, colleagues, and others connected with all of our program areas, including the Smart Campaign, Financial Inclusion 2020, Financial Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities, Financial Access at Birth, and Investing in Inclusive Finance.
Our refreshed website will also serve as a hub for educational materials and resources: Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
This edition of Top Picks includes topics on the history of the financial sector, particularly in context of women, financial services for rural and agricultural communities, and areas in which microfinance has succeeded. These posts offer a look into some of the very interesting discussions that are occurring outside of the Center.
- What was banking like for women at the turn of the century? And why is it important to consider this history today? A recent post on the Financial Access Initiative blog, “Women in Banking“, briefly discusses the social components of financial services and offers some great resources for exploring the history of banking. Read the rest of this entry »
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