Social Impact Assessment of Microfinance Programmes - weman

Chapter Four: Orangi Charitable Trust (OCT)
4.1 Institutional Review
4.1.1 Background and History
The Orangi Charitable Trust (OCT) is an off-shoot of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), a
non-governmental development institution created in 1980 in the squatter settlement of
Orangi Town in Karachi. The OPP was formed by the legendary social scientist, Dr.
Akhtar Hameed Khan, who worked in Comilla Academy in Bangladesh. With Dr. Khan’s
vision, OPP’s work fostered a culture of reflection and self-help amongst the enterprising
poor. Respecting the entrepreneurial spirit of people as articulated in OPP’s vision, all the
programmes focus on ‘supporting effective existing structures’ instead of creating new
structures which would likely be unsustainable and counter-productive. Moreover, on the
basis of thorough reflections, action research and analysis, the Project encouraged local
people to generate solutions, develop programmes, run, manage and fund them. While
building technical and strategic capacities for this to happen was realized upfront, Dr.
Khan was also clear that OPP’s success was largely dependent upon the strengthening of
neighbourhoods and communities as well.
Although OPP designed innovative programmes and facilitated their implementation with
considerable success, for e.g. development of sanitation and sewerage infrastructure,
processes were considered fragmented and tactical, more than strategic. When years of
research insights and lessons were synthesised, OPP identified four main issues of Katchi
Abadis. These included (a) sanitation and housing quality (b) employment (c) health (d)
education. While people were organizing themselves and responding to issues, clearly it
was not enough. It was realized that without technical and managerial guidance, and
stable credit support, the solutions will always be sporadic and random. In 1987, the OPP
upgraded itself into four autonomous institutions to improve the quality and scope of
planning and implementation. These were:
• The OPP-RTI (Orangi Pilot Project – Research and Training Institute) dealing
with sanitation, housing , education, research and training;
• The Orangi Charitable Trust (OCT) for microcredit servicing;
• Karachi Health and Social Development Association (KHASDA) looking at
health; and
• The OPP Society which channelizes funds to the above three institutions.
4.1.2 Philosophy and Scope of Services
OCT started its microcredit servicing from 1987 with an aim to support the existing
businesses. The rationale being that micro enterprises in Orangi were not able to access
loans from commercial banks due to loan size, collateral requirements and other
considerations. The key objectives of OCT are to: