finca peru

its not that im proud to be associated with my mfi, but more than i am humbled and honored that i get to be associated with them.

There are literally tens of thousands of MFIs globally...
but how many won GOLD in the 1st ever social performance reporting award?

http://www.themix.org/press-release/first-recipients-new-social-performance-reporting-award

To catch you up, social performance reporting has been one of most obvious achilles tendons of the microfinance industry. That is to say, it hasn't been done until recently. It is very difficult to provide facts to back up an assertion that microloans bring poor entrepreneurs out of poverty. How exactly is that quantifiable, numerically? And how can we tests microfinance's success across nations and continents? How can we compare a Kenyan woman's fruit stall to an Azerbaijan man's taxi business? Or a fisherman in Phnom Penh, a major city in Cambodia, to a grocery shop owner in the rural central Andes of Peru?

What kinds of questions can we ask, and what is appropriate to ask in certain cultures? Certainly you wouldn't appreciate if someone knocked on your door and asked you how much you made last year vs. how much you made this year.

Some of the questions that FINCA Peru has on the survey they use, which is widely used by many other MFIs, are "do you have an iron? do you have a washing machine?" etc. But, these need to also be taken in context. It will be interesting to watch this field emerge.

I'm honored that my MFI is on the ball on this issue.

Meet Lisette, a FINCA borrower, and her baby: