You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2011.
> Posted by Center Staff
CFI Managing Director Beth Rhyne provides the CGAP Microfinance Blog series on over-indebtedness with its final post, which begins:
It is my privilege to close out this blog series which has been a wonderfully rich exploration of one of the most complex and consequential topics in microfinance. I’m tempted just to sit back and say – I like what Rich wrote about the challenge of definitions and how Jessica illustrated the difficulty of drawing the line of “acceptable sacrifice” and the way Jacco laid out the responsibilities of various stakeholders. In fact, that’s largely what I propose to do, while taking up the overall theme of learning from research.
This series demonstrates the wide field of research emerging on over-indebtedness. Several of the contributors to the series are the first movers who have established tentative hypotheses and tested research methodologies. We need more such studies to inform product design and policy making. Milton is skeptical that more knowledge will lead to better outcomes, and he does have a point…
Read more at the CGAP Microfinance Blog…
> Posted by Josh Goldstein, Principal Director for Economic Citizenship & Disability Inclusion, Center for Financial Inclusion, and Michael Stein, Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability
The Smart Campaign has taken a remarkable step forward in protecting the rights of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), as well as other vulnerable and marginalized populations, by drafting revisions to its Client Protection Principles to include specific language prohibiting discrimination. Leaving no room for ambiguity, the new principle on Responsible Treatment of Clients stipulates that “client selection and treatment should not involve discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, political affiliation, disability, religion or orientation. Non-discriminatory treatment is important for providing access to financial services to all clients who can use them and builds their confidence in the fairness of the provider.” Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Jennifer Maurer, RESULTS
How much of the US federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid, including microfinance and microenterprise? If you think around 25 percent, you wouldn’t be alone — that’s the median estimate from the most recent poll. The poll also asked how much Americans thought would be “appropriate” to spend on foreign aid; the median response was 10 percent. But how much do we actually spend? Just 1 percent. This is consistent with numerous polls over the years. Americans grossly overestimate what we spend overseas on development and diplomacy.
Yet the House of Representatives continues to attack the foreign aid budget in an attempt to cut the national deficit. Michael Gerson — Washington Post columnist and former policy advisor to President George W. Bush — called the attacks on the international affairs budgets “both irrelevant and destructive.” It’s irrelevant because cutting funding from less than 1 percent of the budget is not going to make a dent in our national deficit. Instead, the attempt creates a distraction from the real, difficult decisions that have to be made.”
These cuts would be destructive because the programs are saving lives and building stable countries. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
This week our blog-hopping takes us from the water pump to the cell phone, as well as points in-between.
- Mary Ellen Iskenderian, president and CEO of Women’s World Banking, guest posts at the Harvard Business Review blog to point out the many circumstances in which women are not only microfinance clients, but also microfinance leaders.
- The UN’s World Water Day was last week, and Chelsea Dubois of the (oft-microfinance-oriented) Innovations for Poverty Action blog took the opportunity to show us a striking photo (and the story behind it) that shows us the dire need for clean water in areas such as rural Ghana. (And in connection with MF and H2O, don’t forget Matt Damon.) Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Sergio Guzmán
Amanda Warner accepts the Individual Developer Award for the Smart Campaign's new e-learning module, March 24, 2011.
Eric Berg, the executive director of LINGOs (Learning In NGOs) on Thursday announced the eight finalists and two winners of the second eLearning Global Giveback Competition at The eLearning Guild Learning Solutions Conference and Expo in Orlando, Florida.
We’re very proud that our first-ever e-learning course, “Client Protection and Financial Education in Microfinance,” was presented as a winner in the individual developer category!
The competition is a collaborative effort between the eLearning Guild and LINGOs to match e-learning developers with nonprofit organizations. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
The Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI), in conjunction with the Cuba Study Group, in January sponsored the “Cuba Small Business Summit.”
Participants in the event, which was hosted by the Council of the Americas in New York, examined questions that included: “Could remittances from the US play a key role in providing finance to Cuban new start-up enterprises, in the absence of private or public banks in a position to lend?”
The Miami Herald this week published an op-ed by Sergio Bendixen and Donald Terry that fleshes out the answer to that question.
Bendixen is a founding partner of Bendixen and Amandi International; Terry is former general manager at the InterAmerican Development Bank and current lecturer at Boston University Law School and consultant with the World Bank in Africa. Terry is also a member of CFI’s advisory and faculty councils.
Highlights of the piece, “Remittances and Cuba,” include:
“A commitment from the Cuban government to allow all remittances to enter the Cuban economy freely, unburdened by taxes or other cumbersome regulations, could result in remittances reaching $2 billion to Cuba in the coming years.” Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Michelle Romeu
Five months after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) revoked the licenses of 224 microfinance banks (MFBs), how are institutions of that kind faring?
Many MFB operators have hope that they are headed for better days, reports Microfinance Africa.
The managing director of Gobarau MFB, Alhaji Mustapha Yar’Adua, told the online news source that he “strongly believe[s] this year will be better because … the revocation of the licenses of some MFBs has made us sit up and carry out our duties appropriately”. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Peg Ross, Director, Human Capital Center of Grameen Foundation
Frontline staff, like these field officers in Varanasi, India, need support and guidance to make microfinance effective and meaningful to their clients.
Sitting at his desk in a small office in the far northeast of India, Anil describes why he does what he does: “When I see a client who started with two pigs and now has 50, I know I’m helping to make a difference in her life.” As a regional manager at a small microfinance institution (MFI) working in rural villages, he leads a team of five branch managers and 30 field officers.
Anil joined his MFI to help address the poverty he saw in his own community and because he needed a steady job. He stays because he sees the impact his work is having — and because he still needs a steady job. There are limited employment opportunities in his area and many young people are unemployed. His story is a typical one. He’s not out to make a fortune; he just wants to provide a comfortable life for his family and give the people he serves a chance at a better future.
The Indian microfinance sector is facing an unprecedented crisis and the reasons are many and complex. Politicians, regulators, academics, and the visionary founders and leaders of the sector will continue to debate what went wrong and the best way to fix things. Meanwhile, people like Anil will still be in the field, working hard to help their poor clients escape the bounds of poverty.
One of the things Anil does especially well is translating the mission and vision of his organization for his team in the field. Beyond ensuring that growth and collection targets are met, he wants each one of them to develop the capability and confidence to use their strengths to advance the MFI’s social mission and sustainability objectives. But he’s got a lot on his plate, and thinking about how to support his team sometimes comes at the end of a long 14-hour day. Imagine how much more effectively he could support the professional development of his team members if he had easy-to-use, relevant tools to help him. Read the rest of this entry »
> Posted by Center Staff
As an industry, how do we ensure that clients are treated with dignity, even when they fail to meet their contractual commitments?
The Smart Campaign recently tried to crowdsource the answer from its more than 1,700 endorsers.
The Campaign’s fourth “Call for Tools” collected and sifted through MFIs’ best practices as embodied in documents about appropriate collections practices. Swadhaar FinServe Pvt. Ltd. (SFPL) won with their submission “Code of Conduct for Collections and Collections Practices for Group Loans.”
“SFPL won our Call for Tools because their policies and procedures for collections are a good example of how MFIs can provide staff with clear expectations for dignified treatment of clients during collections,” said Smart Campaign Tool Development Specialist Leah Wardle. “From their general code of conduct for collections, to their specifics on ethical loan recovery procedures, SFPL’s policies clearly embody elements of our Client Protection Principles.” Read the rest of this entry »
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