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Microfinance and street children: is microfinance an appropriate tool to address the street children issue ?( Télécharger le fichier original )par Badreddine Serrokh Solvay Business School - Free University of Brussels - Management engineer degree 2006 |
2.1.3. Case studiesa. ASIA: the Children's Development Bank (CDB)71(*) The Bal Vikas Bank, also called the children's development bank, was started in 2001 in New Delhi by Butterflies NGO, with the support of the UK organizations CIVA and Comic Relief. The program was initiated after having made 2 field observations:
The objectives of the Children's development bank can be summarized in 4 key elements: 1. To provide a safe space to deposit money. 2. To inculcate the habit of saving. 3. To provide loans for enhancing the lives and livelihoods of street and working children. 4. To create an institution run by young people for young people, and thereby build leadership and personal skills of all those involved in its running. This project gives the opportunity to street children to save and, under certain circumstances, to apply for a loan in order to start a business or to afford other expenditures (school fees...). The innovative part of this project is its participatory framework. The children are themselves the «managers» of the bank and are involved in the day to day management of the bank, under the supervision of facilitators (called mentors). As pointed by Michael Norton, «participation is the central nexus of this project»72(*) savings and loans being secondary. The beneficiaries are aged between 9 and 18 years. Savings are collected daily in any small amount and an interest of 10% a year is provided on savings. Moreover, an interest of 50% is provided for those who do not withdraw savings for six months. Inculcate the saving habit is one of the core objectives of the bank. The following table illustrates it:
1 US$ = 45 Indian Rs At the age of 15 years, the members are eligible to apply for loans and to set up a business of their choice. To benefit from the loan (called « advances » in the CDB lexicon), children must have been members of the bank for at least 3 months and need to have 20% of the loan amount in their account. Both individual and group loans are available. In order to secure the loan (which is provided after the loan committee, composed of the children themselves, has examined the application), two guarantors are required (e.g. a shopkeeper or another street child). Two types of advances are being provided 1. Welfare advance : an interest free amount aimed at helping street children in their emergency expenditures 2. Development advance: to initiate economic enterprise, provided only to adolescents (interest rate: 5%) Loan repayments are made daily, weekly or monthly, at the discretion of the loan committee. Only in Delhi, advances were given to several children for various businesses. From June 2004 to March 1st 2005 about RS 18,000 (i.e. 400 US$) was given to children to start economic enterprise and about 15% was considered bad debt, «as children either could not continue with their business or had to leave the place and go somewhere else and some went back to their families».. The Bal Vikas Bank is now spreading to some other neighbourhood countries (Nepal, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, etc), and the number of members increases day after day. * 71 We are particularly thankful to Michael Norton (CIVA, UK) for the time spent in London making me discover this project and for the useful data and reports shared, as well as Swasti Rana and Tom Davis for their contribution, as well as Rabiul Ahmed for having made me discovered the project in Kolkata (India) * 72 In that regard, it is interesting to note that the slogan of the CDB is « Empowering children for democratic participation ». |
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