National Microfinance Study of Sri Lanka: Survey of Practices and ...

initiated by SCN is used as a reference document for all staff involved in the
microfinance segments of programmes and training on financial management is
given to partner organisations involved in microfinance. SCN state that they
presently have some staff with prior experience in microfinance scheme
operation.
An interesting example of previous intervention is SCN building pre-school and
then mobilising a women’s S&C group comprised of the mothers of the children
attending the school. The Group is then given a one-off loan fund and the interest
gained from the loan repayments are used to pay maintenance and the salary of
the pre-school teacher. Anecdotal evidence suggests that over the years Redd
Barna established well over a hundred of these and that more than half of them
are believed to still be operational, providing a nice example of microfinance
being used for educative purpose rather than for income generation activities.
After Redd Barna became SCN five years ago, one of the key strategic reorientations
was the decision not to intervene directly. The microfinance segments
of the present programmes are capitalised through grants of between SLR 30,000
and SLR 50,000 per implementing partner/society and these funds are released
quarterly in as required by the partner to the organisation’s bank account.
Partnerships are built with organisations that have a child focus and the proposals
and societies are assessed for their microfinance competence by SCN staff. SCN
accepts proposal in all three languages and then translates them into the English
language. Capacity building of partner organisations is undertaken through
training, workshops and seminars and SCN encourages their partners to attend
other relevant training courses and to engage in cross visits.
Loans are a minimum of SLR 2,000 and a maximum of SLR 10,000 with
differing qualification criteria at the higher levels. Loan cycles vary between six
and twelve months, usually at the discretion of the partner organisation.
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