Microfinance and street children: is microfinance an appropriate tool to address the street children issue ?

II. Methodology

In order to build our research in the most relevant way, we proceeded in three steps:

1. Preliminary field visits

Our field visits started in July 2005, in London. A first meeting has been held with Michael Norton, from the Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action, one of the founder partners of the Children's Development Bank, a new microfinance for street children program settled in some Asian countries. A second meeting has then been undertaken with Swasti Rana, a former worker at the Children's Development Bank in Delhi.

The objective of these two meetings was to get an understanding of the motivations behind the creation of such projects, as well as to have a first understanding of its main functioning.

In October 2005, a visit of the Children's Development Bank branch in Kolkata (India) has been undertaken in order to get a more practical view of a microfinance for street children program and, hence, to frame some important research questions before our field research study in Dhaka^1(*)

2. Field research

Our field research has been undertaken in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, from 15^th December 2005 to 31^st January 2006 (covering a total of 34 working days)^2(*) and focused on a specific microfinance for street children program launched by Padakhep, a microfinance institution active in all the country.

The research has been performed in three phases: research methods design, qualitative data collection and quantitative data collection/extraction.

2.1. Basic data collection and research design (Week 1)

The first step was to understand Padakhep's program. A meeting with Iqbal Ahmmed, Executive Director of Padakhep, and Prity Islam, program manager of the child development section, has helped us in such understanding. Some basic data have then been collected.

The second step was to seek a way to design a comprehensive research.

In order to do, we decided, first, to consult two experienced researchers. A first meeting has therefore been held with Dr. Imran Matin, head of research at BRAC, one of the most famous microfinance institutions in the world. A second meeting has then been organizaed with Mohammed Emrul Hasan, advisor at PLAN International, a famous child organisation, and having achieved a comprehensive paper some months before on the way children in Dhaka manage their money. Those two meetings helped us to frame the key questions and key methods to use.

Following this week, we chose therefore to design our research as a «diversity capture» exercise, where the interest was the capture the diversity in terms of demand for financial services and effectiveness of financial services provision, by building on participatory methods.

2.2. Qualitative data collection (Weeks 2 to 4)

The following three weeks have been essentially dedicated to the collection of qualitative data. This has been achieved by using participatory tools in order to guarantee the reliability of the data collected.

The first requirement was to try to set up a minimum trust relationship between participants. Given the limited time and the impossibility to establish it in the very short-term, we tried at best to consult them before talking to them, by telling them the objective of the interviews, and why this is useful for them. Moreover, knowing the need to create a child-friendly environment, we brought them some snacks which were distributed at the end of each session and which enabled us to discuss with them after the completion of the sessions.

Finally, we must point out that, in order to better understand the working activities of the street children, we did one night a field visit in Kawran Bazar market (with one member of Padakhep'staff), where many street children are working.

2.2.1. Research tools:

Our research tools included:

· PRA sessions: these are powerful participatory tools which enable to identify the needs and perceptions of participants. In our context, it was used for making a small introduction to the financial world of street children, by analysing their conceptions of money, savings and credit. As this required particular competencies in order to lead it, we were hopefully supported by three specialized members of Padakhep's research team.

· Focus-group discussions (FGD): Small participatory group discussions, generally composed of 8 to 10 children, aimed at capturing the demand for financial services.

· Individual-in-depth interviews: street children who were individually interviewed were identified from the FGD and were the ones who had received a loan. This was chosen as a selection criteria in order to analyse the effectiveness of the intervention.

· Observation and staff discussions

2.2.2. Sample structure:

The street children interviewed have been divided into 4 categories (following Padakhep's classification), each category being divided - when possible - into three age categories ( 8 to 12 ; 13 to 16 ; 16 to 18 ) with an effort to get an equal distribution of girls and boys. Here are the 4 categories of SC targeted by the study (located in 3 different Drop-In-Centres^3(*)):

1. On the street day and night without their family : Location - DIC Kawranbazar DIC Mirpur

2. On the street during the day and return to their family at night: Location - DIC Mirpur

3. On the street during the day and return to their relatives : Location - DIC Mirpur

4. On the street & return to their family : Location - DIC Mohammedpur

2.2.3. Challenges and limitations

Our biggest barrier has been the language. As we do not speak Bangali, this created sometimes difficulties in communicating with the children, and the quality of the data were depending a lot on the ability of the translator to lead a good group discussion or to make a child comfortable before individual interview. The second problem was sometimes the difficulty in retaining some children, who had to leave for work.

* ¹ Whenever in Dhaka, we also found interesting to meet the director of SafeSave,M. Nipun Sangma, who made me discover how this very well-known organisation targets the extremely poor people.

* ² Considering a one week national holiday, it represented 6 days work a week.

* ³ A drop-in-centre is a centre which provides various types of activities to street children. See further for a complete discussion.