Improving Microcredit from the Perspective of Borrowers

In the efforts to address poverty, the voices of those impacted by economic insecurity are too often conspicuously absent. The Goldin Institute's work builds on the experiences and perspectives of those living in poverty and designs solutions based on their knowledge, strategies and aspirations.

The current debate about the efficacy of microfinance is marked by the absence of those who have most at stake in the controversy: loan recipients. The Goldin Institute is working to lift up these voices, most often marginalized women, and restore their perspectives, insights and aspirations to the discussion.

Our strategy for bringing their voices back in was simple: we decided to ask them. We adopted a strategy known as "oral testimony" which relies on extended semi-structured interviews to let participants tell their own stories in their own words, share their opinions and experiences and convey their own understandings of how development and poverty has transformed the history of their lives and villages.

We wanted to take this approach a step further. Often oral testimony research is colored by power-dynamics between "researchers" and "subjects". Within these dynamics, answers to questions are often pre-determined by what each party expects to hear from the other. We decided to address this by inviting microcredit recipients in Arampur, a village in rural Northern Bangladesh, to interview each other about their own experiences with loans. We hoped that the content of these interviews would be shaped by mutual dialogue, rather than by top down agendas and expectations about what we, as researchers, wanted to hear.

In order to do this, we trained a group of villagers in basic, qualitative research techniques and invited them to interview their peers and neighbors. The result was open-ended, conversation-style interviews, recorded using digital-audio recorders, in which the interviewees participated in directing the discussion by framing conversations through stories, life experiences and their own personal histories with microcredit lending organizations. Using this approach we heard what people had to say about microcredit on their own terms.

What are the advantages of this approach?

  • The community researchers themselves were all microcredit loan recipients. They were able to give us early insight into the landscape of credit and poverty within the village. They participated in shaping and revising our research goals to better answer our questions about microcredit, as well as transforming the strategies we employed to accomplish them.
  • As community members, they understood the best ways to conduct the work within the cultural context of rural Bangladesh. They understood what the best times to approach people were, how to make each interview session as comfortable for respondents as possible, how to best navigate the complexities of rural Bangladeshi household and gender power dynamics, and how to ask probing questions without crossing sensitive lines.
  • Respondents were more comfortable speaking with their neighbors than they would be with a researcher from outside. Respondents did not have to explain taken for granted points. They did not have to couch their language or speaking style to be understandable to an outsider. Further, the semi and unstructured interview strategy allowed the respondents to direct the conversation, steering discussions to what they wished to talk about.
  • Community researchers were better situated to explain and help us interpret stories and experiences as they were shared. They did this by recording audio field notes after every interview and by sharing their stories in daily debriefing sessions.
  • Community researchers were able to elicit different kinds of responses and stories than those we could have gathered on our own. The stories shared by respondents were of a remarkably different kind than those that could or would have been shared with outside researchers. As such, the interviews collected by our fieldworkers contain different kinds of insights, stories, and critiques that shed a new light on microcredit in rural Bangladesh.
  • Community researchers knew their community and therefore knew what questions to ask. They knew their respondents and were able to ask about specific incidents from their lives and histories. They could seek targeted information about their families and livelihoods. They knew the intimate details of cultural, agricultural, and political processes in the village. They were able to ask questions that pertained directly to local practices and histories.

Improving Microcredit in Bangladesh

In the efforts to address poverty, the voices of those impacted by economic insecurity are too often conspicuously absent. The Goldin Institute's work builds on the experiences and perspectives of those living in poverty and designs solutions based on their knowledge, strategies and aspirations.

Through the Goldin Institute's pioneering work on Community-Based Oral Testimony in Bangladesh, we are building new ways to improve poverty alleviation strategies, especially microcredit, from the perspective of the poor.

The Community Based Oral Testimony Research Team meets in Arampur, Bangladesh.

The current debate about the efficacy of microfinance is marked by the absence of those who have most at stake in the controversy: loan recipients. The Goldin Institute is working to lift up these voices, most often marginalized women, and restore their perspectives, insights and aspirations to the discussion.

We invite you to review the links on the right side of this page to learn more about the Goldin Institute's work on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh and around the world.


Youth Movement Key to Ending Conflict in Colombia

New Generation of Leaders in Colombia Offers Hope

This story about the emerging leaders in Colombia, reminded us of how the best opportunities for ending the conflict—and healing wounds left behind—lies with young people who have lived through the violence and best understand the solutions. 

As the story reports on one group in particular making a difference in their community of Villavicencio called the Youth Roundtable: 

The Youth Roundtable engaged in numerous consultations with its members—who include youth from rural and urban areas, members of indigenous communities, displaced young people and other marginalized groups—to identify needs and propose solutions.

Lissette on left, along with fellow Global Associate Denis Okello and advisory board members, Akif and Sebastian at a recent ESPERE training in Mexico City.This is not unlike the Institute's own peace building work in Colombia through Global Associate Lissette Mateus Roa's work in the ESPERE project. Lissette continues to point the way towards young teachers, former combatants and community leaders providing the best hope for the country moving beyond the half-century long civil conflict and being in place to build on the promised peace treaty.

For more on Lissette's work, please click here


Alarming Numbers from Central Africa

As we begin the new year, we take notice of fresh reports coming out of the Central African Republic (CAR) on the increase of child soldiers being recruited into the armed conflict during the last calendar year.

Both this story from the Reuters Foundation and this one from Humanosphere, tell the concern of the year-long conflict in CAR and the effects to children in general:

 

[quote]Children as young as eight are forced to fight, carry supplies, and perform other frontline and support roles. They often suffer physical and mental abuse by militants, and some have been ordered to kill. Having witnessed or committed killings and other violent crimes, children associated with armed groups are highly likely to suffer fear, anxiety, depression, grief, and insecurity, and many require specialized psychological support."[/quote]

- Save the Children

 

Estimates of between 6 to 10 thousand children have been drawn into the conflict as armed soldiers, but the impact to children in general (those left homeless, faced with disruption to their schooling and in need of emergency assistance) is estimated at an astounding 2 - 3 million. 

Sourced for the Reuters story was a representative from Save the Children, Julie Bodin. Bodin is uniquely positioned to comment on the situation in CAR, as she is the child protection manager working directly with those being impacted by the fighting and violence in the country.

Child in a rebel camp in the north-eastern Central African Republic.<br> Photo Credits: Pierre Holtz / UNICEF CARWe couldn't be more in agreement with Bodin in the "need for long term goals of supporting children once they have been released from armed groups to stop them from rejoining. Extreme poverty, lack of education and jobs all create a huge reservoir of potential new recruits." Our own project work in northern Africa, especially in developing the National Platform for Child Soldier Reintegration and Prevention in Africa, is based on the same longer-term goals of how best to reintroduce former combatants into civil society to give them opportunities that become more attractive than rejoining the fight as armed soldiers. Whether in Uganda, or in the Central African Republic, or in Colombia, where we continue to address the same issues, the assistance needed to reverse the numbers of child soldiers is universal.

 

[quote]It is important to support youth and children to pass from a culture of war and conflict to a culture of peace. Child-friendly spaces and youth networks are urgently needed to rebuild these children's lives, as well as institutions, such as schools, which will help them thrive."[/quote]

- Julie Bodin of Save the Children