14th MFC Annual Conference and Recap of the past conferences

The 14th MFC Annual Conference “Reorienting Microfinance towards Balanced Growth”

The upcoming conference took place in Prague from May 17 until May 20, 2011. All of the presentations from this conference will be available on this web page. The conference had a very interesting and controversial opening plenary. The plenary panel featured Maria Teresa Zappia of BlueOrchard, Professor Dr. Adalbert Winkler of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Dr. Milford Bateman of the University of Juraj Dobrila Pula, Christian Speckhardt of responsAbility, Luka Djurovic of Alter Modus and Rupert Scofield of FINCA International. The panel was moderated by Elvira Lefting of Finance in Motion. To learn more about Milford Bateman's work, please read this page.

In addition, you can watch short interviews with the following industry leaders and participants at the conference by clicking on their names: Milford Bateman, Raymond Maes, Andrea Limone, Elvira Lefting, Piotr Korynski, Georgi Breskovski, Gulnara Shamshieva, Aldona Rutkowska, Ewa Bankovska, Katarzyna Pawlak, Antonio Separovic, Lisa Laegreid, Rafe Mazer, Marco de Natale, Andre Barkov, Kenan Crnkić and Ryan Elenbaum.

Not familiar with the MFC?

The Microfinance Centre (MFC) is a grassroots network of over 100 microfinance institutions from Europe and Central Asia. MFC aims at contributing to poverty reduction and the development of human potential by promoting a socially oriented microfinance sector. Every year MFC holds annual conferences that attract a wide international audience of microfinance practitioners.

The 14th Annual Conference titled Reorienting Microfinance towards Balanced Growth"” was held on May 18-20, 2011 in Prague, the capital of Czech Republic. Since importance of Social Performance Management has been the primary emphasis of this conference, please view the latest After Hours Seminar with Beth Rhyne, Sam Daley-Harris and Leah Wardle to learn more about current initiatives in SPM.

Since the first conference by MFC was organized in 1998, in this post I would like to review the previous 13 conferences held by MFC and provide links to presentations and video clips, when available. I think it is important to take a step back and consider evolution of microfinance industry from 1998 until 2011 as it has been captured through the various conferences.

A look back at the MFC Conference over the years

• The 13th MFC Annual Conference, titled "Post-Crisis Microfinance: What is the Responsible Way Forward?" took place in Astana, Kazakhstan in May 2010.

• The 12th MFC Annual Conference, titled "The Global Crisis: Threat of Opportunity for Microfinance?" took place in Belgrade, Serbia in May 2009. 

  The following experts were interviewed in 2009: Grzegorz Galusek and Gert van Maanen of MFC, Robin Ratcliffe of ACCION (speaking about overindebtness), Ian Townsend of Inicjatywa Mikro, Maria Ekstrom Johansson from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Peg Ross of the Grameen Foundation, Christian Ruehmer of Perfect Point Partners, Robin Ratcliffe of ACCION (on the Campaign for Client Protection), and Keith Flintham of Opportunity International.

• The 11th MFC Annual Conference focused on "Clients and Institutions, Growing Together" and was held in 2008 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It was hosted in partnership with XacBank. The "burning issues" discussed included scaling up institutions, financial literacy and education for clients, social performance monitoring, and good governance.
• The 10th MFC Annual Conference titled "10 Years of Bridging the Market Gap" took place in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2008. 
• The 9th Annual Conference on "Microfinance with a Mission: Learning Together” was organized by MFC and the European Microfinance Network (EMN) in Budapest, Hungary in 2006.
• The 8th Annual Conference of Microfinance Institutions in C&EE and the NIS titled "Success of Microfinance: How do We Use this Success to Maximize Benefits for Clients?" took place in 2005 in Bucharest, Romania. 
• The 7th Annual Conference titled "Thinking About the Future - Strategic Choices for Microfinance" was organized in Warsaw, Poland in 2004. 
• The 6th Annual Conference titled "Moving Towards Client Focused Microfinance" took place in Moscow, Russia in 2003. 
• The 5th Annual Conference of Microfinance Institutions in C&EE and the NIS titled "Innovations and Diversity" was held in Budapest, Hungary in 2002. 
• The 4th Annual Conference of Microlending Institutions in C&EE and the NIS titled "Microfinance Challenge in the Region" was held in Bratislava, Slovakia in 2001. 
• The 3rd Annual Conference took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2000.
• The 2nd Annual Working Conference took place Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina in 1999.
• The 1st Annual Working Conference took Warsaw, Poland in 1998.