Highlights from Global Microcredit Summit 2011

Catch the highlights from the Global Microcredit Summit, held once every five years, that took place on November 14-17 in Valladolid, Spain. 

Particularly highly rated by delegates was the plenary session that opened the Summit, “Beyond ‘Ethical’ Financial Services: Developing a Seal of Excellence for Poverty Outreach and Transformation in Microfinance”. Presenting the conceptual paper on the Seal, Frances Sinha, Director of EDA Rural Systems in India, explains that the Seal aims to “recognize the achievements of microfinance institutions at the client level, help to identify and document what are effective practices, and also determine what are the practical ways to monitor those practices and poverty outreach and value. Microfinance should not only be sustainable and responsible, it needs to be genuinely inclusive and add value.”

Also on the panel were Chris Dunford, former CEO and now senior research fellow of Freedom from Hunger in the U.S., John de Wit, managing director of Small Enterprise Foundation in South Africa, Isabel Cruz, president of FOROLACFR in Mexico, and Anne Hastings, CEO of Fonkoze in Haiti.

Practitioner panelists John de Wit and Anne Hastings explained why they support the Seal of Excellence by describing how they perceive it will benefit MFIs:  its ability to differentiate among MFIs and bring attention to the currently undiscovered innovators, to motivate and energize MFI staff, and to demonstrate to stakeholders what exactly the MFI’s social mission is.

Chris Dunford and de Wit additionally both stipulated that initiatives like the Seal, which seeks to celebrate the best among us, that “It is inevitable. We practitioners who aspire to social objectives will be held accountable, for measuring, reporting and for internal and external auditing of our social performance.”

Notable Quotes

“Is the reporting burden too great? True, there are many burdens of reporting … but is this one of them? Not for me. This is one kind of reporting that gets to the very heart of what we’re trying to accomplish. … It’s about what we do and who we are.”
~ Anne Hastings, Fonkoze, Haiti

“How do we differentiate ourselves [from predatory lenders]? We’re not over-indebting people, we’re not charging unbelievable interest rates, and every day we work to be sure that our services do change peoples’ lives. … What I as a practitioner [am] hoping for is that the Seal will be able to differentiate between those who are really trying to do constructive microfinance—who are really trying to make sure that we do deliver a difference in the lives of poor people, that we give them their chance at dignity, their chance of climbing out of poverty—from a lot of microfinance that is very, very worrying.”
~ John de Wit, Small Enterprise Foundation, South Africa

 “The Seal will be successful if it helps practitioners feel good about their work, feel more committed to the work, feel like their mission is doable, there are colleagues around the world who are equally committed and perhaps taking different approaches that we can learn from mutually, motivate staff. At same time, needs to gain importance, credibility, value through use by donors, investors, and regulators.”
~ Chris Dunford, FFH, U.S.

About the Campaign

The Microcredit Summit Campaign is a project of RESULTS Educational Fund, a U.S.-based advocacy organization committed to creating the will to eliminate poverty. The Campaign was launched in 1997 and, in 2007, surpassed its original goal of reaching 100 million poorest families with credit for self-employment and other financial and business services. The Microcredit Summit Campaign aims to reach 175 million of the world’s poorest families by 2015 and ensure that 100 million of those families move above the World Bank’s $1.25-a-day poverty threshold.