January 2010
In A Broken City, Fonkoze Stands
One of the most urgent problems facing Haiti is the rising price of goods, exacerbated by a shortage of cash in the country. National banks have been slow to open, and even slower to make significant sums of cash available to other financial institutions in the country. One of my Haitian friends wrote on Saturday: “Thanks to God I am still alive but I have a lot of friend died [sic]. My house broke down and I am sleeping around the street with no money to buy food I do my best to stay alive.”
In a broken city, Fonkoze stands. The largest microfinance institution in Haiti, Fonkoze serves over 200,000 people with credit, savings, money transfer, and adult education. Of these services, Haitians and their families living abroad have been most concerned with money transfer. Food, water, and other essentials are for sale in Port-au-Prince—the question is how to get cash to buy these goods. Fonkoze has answered, opening 34 out of 40 branches throughout the country last week, paying out cash transfers and reporting that customers can use any of three services—Moneygram, Unitransfer, or CAM.
Microsavings Initiative Uses the PPI
Are the poor able to save money, even a few pennies a day or a week? The answer is yes, and microfinance institutions around the world are helping them do so by operating savings programs in addition to loans.
Grameen Foundation today announced a new initiative designed to expand safe access to formal savings accounts for poor people, especially those living on less than $1.25 per day. The Microsavings Initiative, which is supported by a $9.78 million three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will work with microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Ethiopia, India and the Philippines to test and refine models that can be used by other institutions to provide savings options for people living at the very bottom of the economic ladder. The initiative aims to create 1.45 million new savers at these institutions over the next three years. The Progress out of Poverty Index™ (PPI™) will help in this process.
Two of the three MFIs chosen are already using the PPI to better serve their poorest clients. The Microsavings Initiative plans to use the PPI to measure the impact of savings programs, as well as credit programs, on MFI clients. The PPI will help answer the question, “how do savings programs help move clients out of poverty?”
