It is very hard to believe that there is only 3 weeks left to my mandate. While I did get homesick, it has passed and now I am wondering where the time has gone.
I thought I should write a little but about what the Centre for Micro-Finance (CMF) does for Nepal.
Micro-finance is one of the few effective tools for poverty alleviation and has proven to be very successful in Nepal. The poor people of Nepal can now safely deposit money and accumulate funds as well as access loans for productive purposes (such as the creation of a small business) leading to higher incomes.
CMF's major activities include providing trainings, technical assistance and consultancy services. CMF also conducts studies and research and promotes a network among micro-finance institutions (MFIs) in Nepal. CMF has a wide internal network with all major micro finance actors of Nepal and has established a network with international organizations. CMF's vision is "sustainable micro-finance services for the poor".
Along with their vision they have 2 goals:
"Goal 1: Strengthen MFIs serving the poor especially focused on women & excluded groups.
Goal 2: Enhance service delivery capacity of development partners promoting the microfinance sector" (CMF Nepal, http://www.cmfnepal.org/?pg=vmg, 2011)
Micro-finance produces an impact in other areas including good governance, participation in the political processes, women empowerment, social inclusion, and conflict transformation. Recently, CMF was part of a project that deals with micro-finance and reproductive health education. CMF is also involved with a project that deals with ensuring the inclusion of women in Nepal's emerging democracy (through the development of women's saving and credit cooperatives as schools of democracy).
The work that CMF undertakes is much more than providing financial services for poor people. CMF is empowering people, by rasingn awareness about their rights and advocating financial services as a human right. Access to financial services is not technically speaking a human right, but by reviewing the work that CMF does and how the micro-finance sector in Nepal has developed over the past 20 years, you can really begin to question why acces to financial services is not a human right.
Despite ongoing development efforts especially on behalf of CMF, poverty remains rampant in Nepal with approximately 31% of the population living below the poverty line, with poverty at its highest in rural areas. CMF was established to help these poor rural areas step out of poverty. According to the Micro-finance Summit 2010, Chaired by CMF, the following is a list of current challenges in the micro-finance sector.
- "How to increase funding for the microfinance sector so as to improve client retention for microfinance services while simultaneously improving the livelihood of existing clients with entrepreneurial skills;
- How to make microfinance more inclusive towards excluded groups, the formal financial sector, and the macroeconomic framework of Nepal;
- How to properly govern Microfinance institutions so that they can not only reach their intended target markets in rural areas, but also provide them with sustainable microfinance practices;
- How to eradicate the burdens of poverty such as a lack of access to healthcare and education through the incorporation of savings and insurance schemes with microfinance practices;
- How to improve credit schemes and creating a model for value chain finance in microfinance in cooperation with commercial banks so as to improve the sustainability of the microfinance sector" (Micro-Finance SUmmit 2010, http://microfinancesummitnepal.org/, 2010) .
Thinking about what CMF has done to help alleviate poverty in Nepal made me think about my time spent in Nepal. During our pre-departure training, we were assigned an article about the impact of short term volunteers versus long-term volunteers. Despite the article coming to the conclusion that short term volunteers can sometimes prove less beneficial and end up taking more away from the experience then the organization gains from hosting a volunteer, I would have to disagree based on my experience so far in Nepal. I agree that short term volunteers are limited in some ways compared to long term volunteers but I believe that both types of volunteers are setting out to do the same thing with different approaches. Short term volunteers are part of a chain, and are a small piece of the chain, but are a much needed connection in the chain. Each organization has many goals and each volunteer with that organization is providing a link in the chain to accomplish part of the main goal/s of the organization.
Long term volunteers on the other hand may have one main goal but because of their longer stay with the organization are able to complete more tasks along the way and maybe even reach their end big goal. No matter which way you look at it, both types of volunteers are needed. And while volunteers help organizations, there is much to be said about the experience that the organization gives to both types of volunteers. These types of volunteer experiences help people to grow and offers people an experience that they might not have ever gotten working for an organization in a more developed country.
There is something special about actually getting to interact with the people who are working in the development field in less developed countries compared to working from an office in Ottawa (not to put down development efforts from Canada). What I mean is that working in a 1st world country advocating for change in less developed countries offers a different experience then working in a less developed country advocating for change in the same country. In the end I think what the organization gains from the experience and what the volunteer gains from the experience is equal. Although my time spent in Nepal is a very short time, it has confirmed my desire to keep working in the field of human rights. In the end it does not matter if you are a short term volunteer or a long-term volunteer as long as the experience inspires you to continue working/volunteering/or doing advocacy work for the development sector, whether it be from a developed country or a less developed country.
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