Loan-tracking systems for NGO microcredit programmes
Loan-tracking systems may provide much more information than the current status of the loans. This article describes information that can be gathered on loan application forms to monitor the economic impact of the loan on business owners and their families. Programmes can track changes by comparing applications for initial and repeat loans. The systems reviewed typically monitored changes in the client enterprises and reported key changes separately for men and women, but gave little information on their socio-economic characteristics. The study suggests that loan-tracking systems can often be implemented at a relatively low cost, and even simple systems can generate useful information for guiding programmes.
Microcredit in the Caribbean : Experiences & Best Practice-EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 Executive Summary : Microcredit : Experiences and Best Practice 1
Since the early 1970s, with the formation of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh by the eminent Mohammed Yunus, the microfinance movement has spread throughout the developing and developed world as a weapon in the fight against poverty. However, success of the Grameen model has not been followed by success in different economic and social settings. These failures have been due to several factors including a lack of appreciation of context (social, cultural and economic), and divergent missions between donors, MFIs and the poor. In some case the poor are excluded altogether as MFIs ‘scale-up’ operations to reach more ‘bankable’ clients.
Monitoring and evaluation of forestry projects for local community development
Abstract Monitoring and evaluation are particularly important in forestry projects for local community development because of the diversity and innovative nature of these projects. These projects, taking place on lands that have not conventionally been used for forestry, require new skills of foresters and involve different participants. Monitoring focuses on a project's inputs, activities, management and outputs to improve the operation of the project as designed. Evaluations re-examine the design of the project and assess its impacts. Ongoing evaluations support mid-course corrections while ex post evaluations address mitigation and follow-up activities in the project area and offer lessons for the design of other projects. The early experience with monitoring and evaluation of rural development projects indicates that the findings have not been well utilized. The main reasons for this include resistance by project management and field staff, problems in identifying data requirements, mismatched frequency or timing of reports, use of inappropriate data collection and analysis methods, the location and organization of monitoring and evaluation units, budgeting problems and cost over-runs and inadequate attention to the presentation and communication of findings and the appraisal of the monitoring and evaluation system itself.