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> Posted by Center Staff
How does the idea of “measuring microfinance impact” play out on the ground?
Aurélie Dagneaux takes a close look at this question through the lens of her observations of Fundación Paraguaya. She’s been visiting there as part of the ACCION International Ambassadors. She and the other Ambassadors have been deployed around the globe to gain insight into the state of the industry. Their blog is here; you can even subscribe.
Here at the Center blog, we have already highlighted reports from Ambassadors Nirav Chheda, Pamela Chang, David Firth Bard, Stephen Matthew Lee, Jason Loughnane, Wei Wei Pan, and Leah Vinton.
Dagneaux’s post “Measuring Microfinance Impact” begins:
As ACCION Ambassadors, our mission is to document the impact of microfinance.
Let me share with you what my first week in Fundación Paraguaya taught me. I’ll shed a light on some other experiences I had in other places as a microfinance consultant.
“Fundación en Acción”
For our readers already familiar with the Fundación, I’ll be brief on what they do.
Fundación Paraguay is a 25-years old NGO, conducting 3 main programs: microfinance, self-sustainable agricultural schools, and youth business education. I’ll only discuss here the microfinance part. I will even narrow it only to its village banking part (making the bulk of clients: 70%). The village banking consists of women committees of 10-15 entrepreneurs each. There are over 2,000 committees, representing 32,000 clients. Women receive loans, starting from 100,000 Guarani’s ($25), up to 1,200,000 Guarani’s ($300) after a few loan cycles. FP also provides them with training (ranging from financial and business education, increasing your sales, business plans to interpersonal relations). Women are required to save money in order to educate them to do so. Unfortunately that’s not a service of the Fundación itself, as it is not a regulated bank enable to take savings, but a NGO.
Last year, Fundación Paraguay – like many organizations maturing – started feeling the need to measure their impact on client’s lives and to document it. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
It’s great when the Center’s articles are echoed around the Web, and especially when someone else takes the time to translate them. In this case, we’re particularly grateful to the Portal de Microfinanzas, an affiliate of the Microfinance Gateway, for posting a Spanish version of our “Microfinance Matters” interview with Martin Burt.
Burt, who created the microfinance NGO Fundación Paraguaya (FP) in 1985, is one of a score of industry leaders from around the globe who’ve appeared in the Center’s ongoing “Microfinance Matters” series. Other leaders in that spotlight include Grameen Foundation President Alex Counts, CONFIE Holding Chair Pilar Ramírez, Enda Inter-Arabe Executive Director Essma Ben Hamida, and Enterprise Solutions to Poverty founder and head Nancy Barry.
Burt started out with the idea of zeroing in on the problem of chronic unemployment in his homeland’s urban slums and rural areas. FP grew to be one of Latin America’s best-performing microfinance institutions, and today it serves 70,000 clients, most below the poverty line. FP was the first development NGO in Paraguay and the country’s first microenterprise program.
To read the entire “Microfinance Matters” interview with Martin Burt in Spanish, please click “Fundación Paraguaya: Expandiendo las microfinanzas, reduciendo la pobreza.” To check out the English version, you can click “Martin Burt & Fundación Paraguaya: Stretching Microfinance, Narrowing Poverty.”
Have you read?
Financial Education & Fundación Paraguaya – ACCION Ambassadors Blog the World – June 15, 2011
¿Medir? ¿Aliviar? No, Eliminar la Pobreza
Measure? Alleviate? No, Eliminate Poverty
> Posted by Center Staff
From China to Paraguay, ACCION International’s Ambassadors are blogging from the field. Their dedicated blog is a great view of microfinance from roughly 5-6 feet, instead of the frequent bird’s-eye view from 30,000′. We’ll be cross-posting, but it’s also a good idea to consider subscribing.
We recently showcased Jason Loughnane‘s post on Akiba’s new loans via a program that bears a passing resemblance to Energy Links. This time around, we’re excited to share “The Classroom Beneath the Tree,” Leah Vinton‘s take on financial literacy as promoted by Fundación Paraguaya.
Vinton’s June 14 post starts out:
2,700 women by December. If Fundación Paraguaya has their way, they will reach 2,700 women with enhanced financial literacy training in order to reach the even larger Fundación goal of assisting more than 6,000 women to increase their incomes enough to surpass the poverty line by the end of December. No small task.
> Posted by Center Staff
Martin Burt created the microfinance NGO Fundación Paraguaya (FP) in 1985 with the idea of zeroing in on the problem of chronic unemployment in his homeland’s urban slums and rural areas. FP grew to be one of Latin America’s best-performing microfinance institutions, and today it serves 70,000 clients, most below the poverty line. FP was the first development NGO in Paraguay and the country’s first microenterprise program.
Burt has further ambitious plans to build microfinance’s potential as a tool to help people lift themselves out of poverty.
“If we want to graduate people across the poverty line, we have to visualize what that means—what type of latrine they should have, what vaccinations,” he says. “Any family can obtain a good latrine or stove if they have the will; they usually are held back by a lack of motivation and skills, as well as by doubts—can I do it? We’re working on motivation and skills.”
Burt shares his thoughts on the microfinance industry past, present, and future in the fourth installment of the “Microfinance Matters” interview series:
Martin Burt
Fundación Paraguaya: Stretching Microfinance, Narrowing Poverty
Imagine yourself as an idealistic new graduate eager to make a difference in the world. You probably don’t want to come home to a malevolent old dictatorship. When Martin Burt returned to his native Paraguay in 1983 after graduate studies in public administration in the US, he saw no room for his new skills in the oppressive government run by General Alfredo Stroessner, then in his 39th year in office.
Burt could have easily fled and become part of the Latin American brain drain. But he never seriously considered that option. “In a poor country, if you’re born into a family that can send you to a good school, you have a moral obligation to help the less fortunate,” he explains.
To read more of the interview with Burt, click here.
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
En su artículo más reciente en el blog Huffington Post, Elisabeth Rhyne explora los esfuerzos de Martin Burt, fundador y director de la Fundación Paraguaya, para lograr sacar a cada uno de sus clientes de la pobreza al utilizar las garantías grupales que se utilizan en los préstamos de microfinanzas. Al permitir a los clientes evaluar el progreso de cada cual, ha logrado darles herramientas para cambiar sus vidas de una manera innovadora.
Por: Elisabeth Rhyne
Mientras académicos de prestigiosas universidades de la Costa Este de los Estados Unidos están desarrollando metodologías para medir el impacto de las microfinanzas en la pobreza – y llegando a resultados modestos, Martín Burt fundador y director de la Fundación Paraguaya, está dando un importante salto en este sentido. No contento con medir o siquiera aliviar la pobreza, Burt cree que puede lograr que todos los clientes salgan de la pobreza. ¿Cuál es su secreto? Buscar movilizar la energía de los clientes.
Martín Burt es un pionero de las microfinanzas. En 1985 fundó la Fundación Paraguaya como una organización que otorga préstamos a microempresarios afiliada a ACCION International, y logró que esta fuera reconocida como una de las mejores organizaciones de microfinanzas (incluyendo un premio a la mejor institución de microfinanzas del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo en el 2004). Luego de un corto lapsus en la política – un periodo como Alcalde de Asunción – Burt regresó a la Fundación Paraguaya con un amplio enfoque social en un momento en donde las microfinanzas estaban centrándose exclusivamente en servicios financieros.
Burt afirma que la contribución más importante de las microfinanzas al desarrollo, no es tanto lo que puede ofrecer, sino como operan. Las microfinanzas han demostrado que las instituciones que atienden a los pobres deben ser financieramente auto-sostenibles para poder lograr tener permanencia y escala, dos calidades necesarias para lograr tener un impacto significativo en la pobreza global. Igual de importante es la manera como las instituciones de microfinanzas tratan a sus clientes – las personas de bajos ingresos. Son tratados como personas capaces, que pueden ser sus propios agentes de cambio. Son apoyados en sus propios esfuerzos por lograr una mejor vida – la auto-ayuda y no la caridad. Burt ha aplicado esta filosofía al desarrollar una escuela (secundaria) agrícola auto sostenible, brindando educación a jóvenes de familias de escasos recursos en una zona rural de Paraguay. La escuela opera sin subsidios externos, financiada únicamente a través de la venta de productos cultivados y procesados en la escuela por los estudiantes. Read the rest of this entry »
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