Recent Articles From EvanCarmichael.com http://www.evancarmichael.com/ http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Conclusion--Microfinance-A-Platform-for-Social-Change.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Conclusion--Microfinance-A-Platform-for-Social-Change.html We firmly believe that an integrated approach to servicing clients can enhance microfinance’s effectiveness as a poverty alleviation tool. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Partnership-Models.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Partnership-Models.html The examples cited are just some of the models where microfinance can be used as a platform to offer and deliver integrated services to clients. Like any business model, there is no single right way to offer services.2 http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/MFIs-A-Critical-Partner-in-Disaster-Mitigation-and-Relief.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/MFIs-A-Critical-Partner-in-Disaster-Mitigation-and-Relief.html Natural disasters are indiscriminate in their impact, but for poor communities – many of which are home to microfinance clients – the effects can be devastating. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Fonkoze-Educating-Individuals-to-Become-Self-Sustaining.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Fonkoze-Educating-Individuals-to-Become-Self-Sustaining.html Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance institution, is another good example of integrating microfinance with other services such as medical treatment, remittances, empowerment, insurance against risk and natural disasters, health insurance, and in particular, education to help improve clients’ situations and contribute to the overall economy. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Pro-Mujer-Providing-Clients-with-Essential-Health-Care.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Pro-Mujer-Providing-Clients-with-Essential-Health-Care.html Pro Mujer, an international microfinance network composed of partner MFIs in several Latin American countries, is a believer and a practitioner of “Microfinance Plus”— a term that has come to capture the concept of offering integrated services to its clients. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Enhancing-Microfinance-Efficacy-through-Integrated-Services.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Enhancing-Microfinance-Efficacy-through-Integrated-Services.html Most microfinance organizations serve what we define as the extreme and the moderate poor. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/BRAC-Linking-Food-and-Training-with-Microfinance.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/BRAC-Linking-Food-and-Training-with-Microfinance.html BRAC, the world’s largest NGO with a large microfinance program serving more than five million Bangladeshi families, is another example demonstrating that microfinance can and should serve the world’s poorest. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Grameen-Bank-Alternative-Microfinance-Approaches.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Grameen-Bank-Alternative-Microfinance-Approaches.html Grameen Bank operates on the premise that the poor remain poor not because they do not have the skills or do not work hard, but because the institutions created around them keep them poor. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Increasing-Microfinances-Reach-with-Integrated-Services.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Increasing-Microfinances-Reach-with-Integrated-Services.html The destitute—individuals at the very bottom of the socioeconomic scale—are still outside the current scope of most microfinance institutions. http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Improving-Microfinance-as-an-AntiPoverty-Tool.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/African-Accounts/1678/Improving-Microfinance-as-an-AntiPoverty-Tool.html As Father Joseph Philippe, the co-founder of the Haitian MFI Fonkoze, states: “You can’t just give a woman a loan and then send her on her way - you have to accompany her as she struggles to make her way out of poverty.”