Wednesday March 10 2010

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Beyond Finance

Your money does not stop in micro-credit. It goes to other initiatives that are essential in the furtherance of socio-economic goals. From knowledge sharing, to business development services, to technology-riding MSME-finance expansion, to a whole lot more of micro- and micro-no-more projects.

SF-MED CTR: The SEEDFINANCE Micro-Economic Development Center

The SEEDFINANCE Micro-Economic Development Centres see a stronger base of socially responsible farmers, fisherfolks, and other producers, cooperating with traders and manufacturers, their activities financed by local MFIs, with support coming from government and non-government organizations, promoting socio-economic public and private cooperation. A more conducive and enabling business environment is foreseen. SEEDFINANCE sees its network of partners, and even those who are presently not SEEDFINANCE partners, growing and reaching out to more and more micro- and SME players in the areas.

Four (4) MED Centers are being set up in cooperation with local coops and banks in the major islands of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao in the Philippines.

I.M.F.R.E.E. : The Institute for Management & Finance in Rural Economic Empowerment: An Education in Empowerment

The Institute for Management & Finance in Rural Economic Empowerment is a partnership between SEEDFINANCE and its partner-MFIs, a development collaboration in knowledge-sharing. It offers a complete line of training and education programs and other consultancy services about microfinance and other socio-economic initiatives. Programs are customized to fit the clients’ needs and specifications. The capacity-building component is backed by the institute faculties’ years of experience and conviction in finance and development work.

Set-up primarily as a training institute for microfinance, I.M.FREE believes that microfinance entails the cooperation of other societal sectors to be fully effective. Thus, the training institute offers a holistic array of management, finance, and economic empowerment courses that run the gamut of academic classroom style instructions to on-site, grassroots exposures and experiences. Imagine learning the ropes of agricultural modernization to ensure food sufficiency from the mouths of farmers and farmhands themselves. Imagine running a water-access system from lessons learned from experts in resource management themselves. And experience forming microfinance centers at the heart of where microfinance works best – in the un-served, hard-to-reach remote rural areas.

Techno-Micro is Mobile Microfinance

MSME Finance takes off in more ways than one through the use of mobile phones, ATMs, cash cards, in transacting the MFIs’ and the entrepreneurs’ businesses, whether for release of loan proceeds, accepting loan payments, micro-remittance, remittance of insurance premiums, micro-business transactions like goods ordering and payment, etc. ATM machines, point-of-sale (POS) machines, PDAs (personal digital assistants) for microfinance field officers, cash cards/debit cards for the microfinance clients.

Field Partners of SEEDFINANCE are experts in microfinance operation and is carefully choosing qualified entrepreneurs in need to be sponsored. Through MNM, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can choose whom to sponsor. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur in a remote poor community, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

The advocacy goes on. Microfinance is only the beginning, as the micro-entrepreneur strives to get out of the depths of poverty and stay emancipated forever. SME Finance and holistic micro-no-more economic development in local communities, ensuring the participation of all local community stakeholders, from local government units, the civil societies there, the business sector, the financial institutions, the investment groups, the socially responsible investors – the full cooperation of all these may be tall order, but one that is possible to reverse the trickle-down-effect myth and start fair and equitable economic development from the grassroots up.