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| Volume 4, Issue 1: May 2006 | ||||
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In This Issue Panel discussion on the paper Building Better Lives: Sustainable Integration of Microfinance with Education in Child Survival, Reproductive Health, and HIV/AIDS Prevention for the Poorest EntrepreneursA
Billion to Gain Global Microcredit Summit 2006 Archived Issues Vol 4 Iss 1 May '06 E-News Information |
A panel discussion on the paper Building Better Lives: Sustainable Integration of Microfinance with Education in Child Survival, Reproductive Health, and HIV/AIDS Prevention for the Poorest EntrepreneursRemarks by John Hatch:
The panel began this forum by saying “building better lives.” Sometimes when we use words like these, we need to be careful about who is creating better lives. Sometimes by offering these services to poor people, we are thinking as actors. I just want to refocus this principle by saying that poor people themselves will be the ones who are going to improve their lives with our help. They are our partners. They are the main actors - we are their partners and they are the ones who do the work. Regarding the word integration, I believe Chris has given us a logical and comprehensive lesson. I only want to share with you the meaning of another word: infrastructure. I like to think of communal banks as part of a global infrastructure. When we use that word “infrastructure,” we think of highways, roads, right? To me, the greatest achievement of communal banks and other group credit organizations is the way they bring people together; these groups are a part of this infrastructure. That is why FINCA for example is working in 22,000 neighborhoods. If we add all the neighborhoods where we have credit groups, we will have over a million communities on the whole planet. Imagine an infrastructure, a communications network with access to one million communities. That is access. I like that image because thinking about highways, I think about all kinds of vehicles that are using this infrastructure, some of them carrying messages about health and home resources, some of them bringing education resources. What we have created is a highway that can be used to bring all these opportunities to people who live in poverty. It is a huge responsibility and from this point of view, we have to agree that we can’t limit credit. We can’t say that one type of microcredit does the job better than another one; there is space on that highway for different vehicles that have made the commitment to bring services to people who need it the most, they can all use the same road. Now we have to determine what we are bringing on this road. I think we need to measure the social impact generated by the implementation of our microcredit or microfinance programs. FINCA has recently been given a great opportunity. We have received a donation from the Gates Foundation to practice integration in Malawi. Doctors from John Hopkins University will put together an entire training system focusing on an AIDS health message, which will be carried by local educators from our own communal banks. It is better to have these people empowered to create their own health solutions and for me it is cheaper than hiring some other people to do this. Read Questions and Answers for Workshop Panelists
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