Reaching and empowering women - Genfinance

BOX 11
Innovations in integrating financial and non-financial services
Microfinance and literacy
In the Sudan, women’s centres operated through the LEAP project identified literacy as a key need
of members and have developed links with government literacy programmes.
Microfinance and health- and HIV/AIDS-awareness
Rural HIV/AIDS Impact Mitigation Project (RHIMP), United Republic of Tanzania
Implemented by World Vision and funded by IFAD, this project includes training on HIV/AIDS, as
well as training of men, women and orphans in livelihood options and land rights. Many participants
felt that these were the most important elements of the project, which has reduced livelihood
insecurity and been effective in reaching out to extremely marginal households.
Rural Financial Services Programme, United Republic of Tanzania
This IFAD-supported government programme supports capacity-building of rural MFIs in awareness
training on gender and HIV/AIDS; preventive measures and legal rights; provision of services to the
sick; support for home-based care; discouragement of stigmatization; and the facilitation of a loan
insurance fund to cover the remaining balance of a loanholder in case of death.
The IMAGE Project, South Africa
The Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS & Gender Equity (IMAGE) Project was developed by the
Small Enterprise Foundation (SEF) and the Rural AIDS and Development Action Research (RADAR)
Programme to be integrated into an existing microfinance programme. IMAGE added ten one-hour
participatory sessions to client centre meetings, followed by a community mobilization phase. A
rigorous impact assessment found that the project’s impact on women's empowerment and their
interactions with partners, including sexual behaviour, was impressive. The intervention also
demonstrated significant economic benefits: increased assets, income, savings, housing and
access to basic goods (Pronyk et al. 2004).
buy equipment to provide better service,
or loans to set up child-care facilities or
waste management services on a
commercial basis.
Financial institutions lacking the scope to
introduce non-financial services themselves
can collaborate with other service providers.
By developing formal or informal links with
providers of other services, microfinance
programmes can increase their contribution
at minimal cost and give providers of other
services ready access to a sizeable, organized
constituency of poor women, which would in
turn contribute to the sustainability of their
own services.
Inter-organizational collaboration
between microfinance programmes and
specialist providers of other types of services
could take several forms. A microfinance
programme could advertise complementary
services available from other organizations,
such as advice and information on legal
rights offered by local women’s movements.
This could be done simply through putting
leaflets on the counter for clients to read, or
could take a more direct form of
collaboration in promotion. A microfinance
programme could refer clients to other
organizations or make special arrangements
for programmes, groups or individuals to pay
for particular services. Collaboration could
also take the form of sharing the costs of
developing training programmes and
innovations or conducting research.
Any or all of these means could be
combined to increase cost-effectiveness over
time. For example, after an initial focus on
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