Prior to joining GF, while conducting an impact assessment for a savings and credit cooperative in Nepal, I saw how poverty cannot be addressed solely by financial means. Particularly for those living in extreme poverty, the solution cannot be limited to providing access to microfinance’s traditional product: an enterprise loan. During the fifty interviews I conducted for the assessment, nearly all the clients claimed that had they undergone appropriate skills development or received training on value addition for the goods and services they were selling, their microenterprises could have generated the additional income required for them to sustainably progress out of poverty. The Solutions for the Poorest team at GF is joining a small but growing group of microfinance practitioners that recognize this and are looking at how microfinance can incorporate new ways of doing business that better meet the needs of the very poor. One approach we are testing couples livelihoods support with microfinance in a financially sustainable manner, contributing to what has been termed the “double bottom line.”
Solutions for the Poorest has partnered with BASIX/The Livelihood School India, a pioneering livelihood promotion institute, in this pilot project. On April 13-14, 2010, we kicked off the partnership with a Consultative Workshop on Solutions for the Poorest at the Chandra Gupta Institute of Management in Patna, Bihar. We began working together to design an integrated and sustainable methodology to provide financial and non-financial services to the extreme poor that BASIX would not typically serve through its mainstream microfinance activities. Microfinance practitioners and academics such as Bandhan’s CEO, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, and Dr. Manesh Choubey from the Center for Microfinance Research shared key learnings from their own experiences in working with the poorest, resulting in a successful exchange of ideas that will help effectively shape our own program.
To broaden our understanding of existing pro-poor microfinance initiatives, my colleague, Malini, and I also travelled to Calcutta to visit Bandhan’s Targeting the Hard Core Poor (THP) program. THP targets female headed households with no or very erratic income opportunities and provides them with the skills and assets required to jumpstart a microenterprise. This support, supplemented with confidence-building measures, cultivates a seemingly limitless entrepreneurial spirit.
One such inspiring example was Shahida Bibi, who with her seven children and disabled husband, survived on a weekly income of $2 Shahida earned as a housemaid. Without any productive skills and regular income, Shahida was not considered creditworthy by other MFIs. THP provided her with four goats eighteen months ago to help generate a more consistent income stream that has allowed Shahida to provide for her family while also nurturing the habit of savings. Since then, she sold one goat for $43, then diversified her income stream by buying chickens and selling eggs, and later by selling coconuts and vegetables to her neighbors. Shahida is a client many microfinance institutions would have overlooked previously, but has now grown into a real business woman, generating a weekly income of $43, and already planning for additional ventures.
Having the opportunity to practically address the issue of global poverty in a holistic way has made the past month’s immersions in Solutions for the Poorest initiatives an intellectually stimulating and inspiring experience. I look forward to continuing our work to propel the bottom billion into the next billion.
Solutions for the Poorest has partnered with BASIX/The Livelihood School India, a pioneering livelihood promotion institute, in this pilot project. On April 13-14, 2010, we kicked off the partnership with a Consultative Workshop on Solutions for the Poorest at the Chandra Gupta Institute of Management in Patna, Bihar. We began working together to design an integrated and sustainable methodology to provide financial and non-financial services to the extreme poor that BASIX would not typically serve through its mainstream microfinance activities. Microfinance practitioners and academics such as Bandhan’s CEO, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, and Dr. Manesh Choubey from the Center for Microfinance Research shared key learnings from their own experiences in working with the poorest, resulting in a successful exchange of ideas that will help effectively shape our own program.
To broaden our understanding of existing pro-poor microfinance initiatives, my colleague, Malini, and I also travelled to Calcutta to visit Bandhan’s Targeting the Hard Core Poor (THP) program. THP targets female headed households with no or very erratic income opportunities and provides them with the skills and assets required to jumpstart a microenterprise. This support, supplemented with confidence-building measures, cultivates a seemingly limitless entrepreneurial spirit.
One such inspiring example was Shahida Bibi, who with her seven children and disabled husband, survived on a weekly income of $2 Shahida earned as a housemaid. Without any productive skills and regular income, Shahida was not considered creditworthy by other MFIs. THP provided her with four goats eighteen months ago to help generate a more consistent income stream that has allowed Shahida to provide for her family while also nurturing the habit of savings. Since then, she sold one goat for $43, then diversified her income stream by buying chickens and selling eggs, and later by selling coconuts and vegetables to her neighbors. Shahida is a client many microfinance institutions would have overlooked previously, but has now grown into a real business woman, generating a weekly income of $43, and already planning for additional ventures.
Having the opportunity to practically address the issue of global poverty in a holistic way has made the past month’s immersions in Solutions for the Poorest initiatives an intellectually stimulating and inspiring experience. I look forward to continuing our work to propel the bottom billion into the next billion.
SHG members gather in Maner, Bihar 
Bandhan THP client with produce from her own farm
Bengali script on wall advertisement
Children of Bandhan THP clients in West Bengal
SHG members in Maner, Bihar Edited version published on Grameen Foundation's Creating a World Without Poverty.
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