Articles
New Partnership to Bring Health Protection to 3,700,000 People in India
Microfinance is a vital weapon in the fight against poverty, but so health protection. Now, through a new partnership between Freedom from Hunger and the MicroCredit Summit in India, 700,000 microfinance clients—plus their family members—will soon be able to protect their health as well as their finances.
Freedom from Hunger and Fellow Microfinance Leaders Release Road Map for a More Client-Centered and Responsible Microfinance Industry.
Freedom from Hunger, as a founding member of the Microfinance CEO Working Group, is proud to endorse a new Road Map to guide the microfinance industry to the highest standards of practice, putting clients first and ensuring that our shared mission of alleviating poverty is achieved in the most responsible and ethical way possible.
The Road Map outlines the vision of the Microfinance CEO Working Group, which includes the CEOs of pioneering microfinance organizations ACCION, FINCA, Grameen Foundation USA, Opportunity International, Pro Mujer, VisionFund International, and Women’s World Banking. The Map also provides practical guidelines and underscores the Group’s commitment to raising industry standards, starting with their own.
Central to the Working Group’s vision is the support for three ambitious initiatives that are helping to lay the groundwork for a more responsible, client-focused and transformative industry: the Smart Campaign, MicroFinance Transparency and the Social Performance Task Force’s universal standards for social performance management.
The Microfinance CEO Working Group members call for their valued peers in the microfinance industry to take action by endorsing these three initiatives, transforming their principles into action, and striving for better ways to provide financial services for the poor.
The Working Group welcomes your comments and feedback. Please contact Meghan Greene, manager of the Microfinance CEO Working Group, at mgreene@accion.org.
Confessions of Two Adult Educators—It's harder than it looks, but the payoff is priceless when done right.
Read or download the article at Interaction's Monday Developments Magazines (link will open in a new window).
Intro
Have you ever watched some -one make a great discovery? Maria Matilde Olazabal did in Chiapas,
Mexico, while training a group of Chamula women to explore different ways they could improve their savings and define their own saving goals. One woman turned to the group and said, “What we are doing here is dreaming that we can reach anything with our own effort. I am not used to dreaming. I like it!”...
Integrating Microfinance and Health Benefits, Challenges and Reflections for Moving Forward
Get the article at Global Microcredit Summit 2011 (link will open in a new window).
Abstract
Microfinance clients and their families often face health challenges that impede their ability to use financial services to improve their lives. Health shocks are among the most common reasons that clients fail to repay, save, and remain active customers. For the benefit of both their social and financial bottom lines, many microfinance providers have felt compelled to help clients prevent and/or treat common health problems. They have developed a variety of responses, ranging from preventive health education to healthcare financing (commitment savings, emergency loans and insurance) to provision of health services and products. This paper surveys the range of experience of microfinance providers of all types and geographies, as well as the available evidence of impacts for clients, families, and communities and the cost and benefits to the microfinance providers who offer health protection options. Lessons for practice and ideas for experimentation and research are offered with the full expectation that integration of microfinance and health protection will become increasingly common in poverty alleviation programs.
Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali: Results from the Segou Expansion Zone and Existing SFC Sites
Abstract
Saving for Change (SfC) is a community-based savings group program designed and implemented by Oxfam America and Freedom from Hunger in Mali, Senegal, Cambodia, El Salvador and Guatemala. This baseline study of the Saving for Change (SfC) program in Mali is the result of a collaborative research effort in 2009-2010 by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) at the University of Arizona. This innovative methodology combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to create a nuanced picture of the current SfC program and to document the baseline situation in an SfC expansion zone in the Segou region of Mali, where a randomized control trial (RCT) is currently underway to measure the socioeconomic impacts of the program over a three-year period (2009-2012).
Leveraging SHGs to advance girls’ access to resources and influence in rural India: Learning games for girls
Abstract
This Freedom from Hunger report details product attributes of their adolescent health education training program, Learning Games for Girls, and discusses the development and implementation of this product. Following the authors’ discussion of the pilot program’s deployment through SHGs, the authors highlight key challenges and lessons learned from providing services to this target population.
Microcredit participation and nutrition outcomes among women in Peru
Abstract
Background Microcredit services the awarding of small loans to individuals who are too poor to take advantage of traditional financial servicesdare an increasingly popular scheme for poverty alleviation. Several studies have examined the ability of microcredit programmes to influence the financial standing of borrowers, but only a few studies have examined whether the added household income improves health and nutritional outcomes among household members. This study examined the hypothesis that longer participation in microcredit services would be associated with better nutritional status in women.
Linking Health to Microfinance to Reduce Poverty
Abstract
The June 2010 issue of the highly-regarded Bulletin of the World Health Organization published an article by Freedom from Hunger’s Trustee Sheila Leatherman and President Chris Dunford entitled “Linking Health to Microfinance to Reduce Poverty.” In the words of the WHO Bulletin editor, “Sheila Leatherman & Christopher Dunford describe the positive effects of linking microfinance with health services.” To read this, the first of many publications about to emerge from the four and a half years of our Microfinance and Health Protection (MAHP) initiative, click here.
Where to microfinance?
Get the article at Microfinance Gateway (link will open in a new window).
Abstract
The microfinance industry is characterized by a "schism," or debate, between two camps that represent broadly different approaches to microfinance: the institutionists and the welfarists. How this debate is resolved has crucial implications for the future of microfinance—its guiding principles, its objectives, its clients, and its impact on the poor and poverty in general.
