As a result, progress with social development, such as improved infant mortality rates, child survival beyond five years of age or maternal health, has not lived up to potential while microfinance reached out to the upper levels of the poverty pyramid, especially those in the entrepreneurial and near-poor categories.9
is also the experience of those change agents that their effectiveness is enhanced when social development programmes are complemented by microfinance.
With their choice of minimalist approaches, to microfinance, many microfinance institutions have thrown out social development gains with the welfare bathwater. This is as might be expected in a world environment that has become increasingly hostile to welfare approaches to poverty relief. There is a place for welfare in the alleviation of chronic poverty, but welfare handouts are not a sustainable strategy for pro-poor development. However, this does not mean that important social development goals should be ignored or dismissed.
i. Survey a sample of microfinance institutions to determine, based on their experience of outreach to the chronic poor, the products, services and client relations processes that have effectively addressed the causes of child and infant mortality, .
The contribution microfinance can make to achievement of the Development Goals has suffered from the abandonment of grassroots community engagement and core client empowerment associated with client participation in the delivery and management of microservices, especially with regard to non-minimalist delivery of such financial to the poorest of the poor. If microfinance is effectively to reach down to the bottom of the poverty pyramid to make a difference to child survival, nutrition, community hygiene and morbidity rates, then the industry must eschew the single- minded minimalist approach and reclaim some of the more important social development structures that are essential to community strengthening and client-oriented human resource development. Progress in these areas has long been a function of the effectiveness of non-government organizations operating as change agents at grassroots level. However, it al, 1996; Karlan et al, 2006; Lovell 1992; Mustafa et al. 1999; Remenyi & Quinones 2000; Simanowitz & Waters 2002; and Todd 1996. 9 The poverty pyramid is described below p. 38. See also Remenyi, 1991; and Kingsbury et al., 2004.
Recommendations regarding Millennium Development Goal No. 4:
ii. Develop a toolkit enabling microfinance institutions to design products, services, management structures and strategic alliances that will promote behavioural, environmental and other changes linked to improvements in the incidence of child and infant mortality among the chronically poor. iii. Design a training programme for microfinance loan officers to enhance their awareness of child and infant mortality trends in the communities they serve, and their capacity to work with the chronically poor to address the root causes of child and infant mortality. iv. Establish a microfinance Child Emergency Fund to support client access to the resources they need for medical assistance, upgrade sanitation standards, improve household sanitation and participate in child survival training without compromising the contribution that access to microfinance products and services can have on improved livelihoods. v. Conduct country-specific outreach planning seminars to facilitate the exchange of information between microfinance institutions and focus on how best to use microfinance to address the root causes of child and infant 9