A few minutes ago, I ended up at the Huff Post reading this thank you from Kushal at Vittana. I thought I’d embed their video here since I’m sure that are at least a few myKRO.org readers who have donated to Vittana in 2010.

The Discover Hope Fund is hiring an executive director to start in February:

DiscoverHope is an international development nonprofit headquartered in Austin, Texas that provides opportunity for women in poverty to create their own prosperity through microcredit, entrepreneurship, and training. We exist so that women who live on less than $2 a day in developing nations can shape their own destinies. Our priority is wealth creation from within communities so women can radiate hope and impact future generations.

The Executive Director (ED) of DiscoverHope manages all aspects of the organization from high-level strategy to partner management to tactical implementation. This includes but is not limited to programs, fundraising, PR, marketing, volunteer management, finance, and governance. The ED is the primary representative DiscoverHope to the community, stakeholders, and other organizations and represents the DiscoverHope staff and reports to the Board of Directors.
This is a position that requires a passion for international development and creating prosperity for those in poverty. It requires an intense level of dedication and is rewarded with an equally satisfying sense of accomplishment that comes with a positive contribution to global social issues.

Required qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required; Graduate degree preferred.
• 3+ years of experience as a successful leader in the nonprofit sector, government, or private sector with proven visionary management and strategic planning capability
• Proven ability to fundraise and cultivate/nurture donor relationships; the #1 thing we are seeking is someone with Revenue Development experience.  Please see this section of our Required Skills area and apply if you have experience with this area.
• Strong experience managing a highly capable team using outcomes measurement and goal-setting
• Experience creating and maintaining high-level relationships within the philanthropic community and private sector
• Entrepreneurial self-starter and creative thinker with experience producing results in a rapidly growing, deadline-driven, fast-paced, dynamic environment
• Proven experience managing and motivating volunteers

Preferred Skills/Experience:

• International field experience (in developing country, Latin America preferred)
• Upper Intermediate to high level of fluency in Spanish required (reading, writing, speaking)
• Experience building international development program with grassroots concepts based on beneficiaries desires
• Knowledge/experience related to the microcredit field
• Public speaking expertise
• Excellent writing skills (includes producing and editing a range of documents for donors, the public, and target audiences)
• Grant writing experience
• Basic financial management experience (includes working with bookkeeper and accountant to manage financial records)
• Nonprofit governance background (understanding and experience of working with a Board)
• Willingness to attend meetings/outreach activities on some evenings and/or weekends
• Technologically proficient: MS Office, Adobe Suite
• Social Media savvy

Visit Tano.org for more information about the job

India is a country of villages where 70% population lies in these villages. There is huge migration of population from Villages to big cities because of less employment opportunity in these villages. There are so many entrepreneur who are migrating to cities in search of jobs because they don’t have the availability of seed capital with which they can start their own business.

Rang De is an effort to stop this brain-drain. Rang De is an opportunity to provide the seed capital to these entrepreneurs to setup their own business and fulfill their dreams. Rang De enables Peer-Peer lending in India so that people can grow together. Rang De is a not-for-profit organization that enables Indian to lend(Micro lending) as little 100 Rs(around $ 2.2) to low income households to start business. In short, anyone can become a banker to the poor, creating new opportunity for them, allowing them to succeed without having to migrate to overburdened cities.

For people who are familiar with Kiva, Rang De leverages the internet to raise funds which is akin to Kiva.  The key differentiators being Rang De’s mission of leveraging the model to drive down interest rates and its focus on India. Rang De’s borrowers pay interest rates ranging from 6% flat p.a. to 10% flat p.a. Rang De has it’s head quarter in Chennai(India). It was started on 26th Jan, 2008 and with in less than 3 years of span, it has raised social investment of $ 720,000 and affected 6088 borrowers. Rang De has Volunteer chapters in major Indian cities and abroad which help to spread awareness among local communities, help Rang De in day-to-day work, help to find the new field partner to reach  every corner of India, help to setup field trips to make sure borrowers are not trapped under any kind of exploitation. Right now, Rang De has presence in 12 states of India and approaching a missing to cover all the states.

Rang De Chapters have been established in cities across India and abroad in order to spread the awareness of Rang De and microcredit. The chapters enable individuals to participate in this movement. Through this platform Rang De’s social investors and volunteers work towards Rang De’s mission of making affordable micro-credit available to every low income household in India.  This portal aims to bring together the members of the various Rang De Chapters by allowing them to showcase their activities and communicate with members of other chapters.

Within India
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Kolkata
Mumbai
Pune
Delhi

Outside India
Dallas
New Jersey
Singapore
Cincinnati
Seattle
SanFrancisco
United Kingdom

Student Chapters
PSG Institute

Today I received a detailed update from Unitus, and I think you might find it as fascinating as I did, for both its honesty and its comments about the state of microfinance in general. I made a small donation a few years ago, and have been impressed with the organization’s communications ever since.  It begins:

Dear Unitus Donors and Supporters:

This is a follow-up to our July 2 announcement that we would redirect our efforts toward new poverty alleviation strategies and initiate no new microcredit acceleration projects. We want to keep you informed about what we’re doing to fulfill our commitments. This letter serves as a stewardship report from our board to you. We are dedicated to using your generous donations appropriately and in alignment with our core mission to help reduce global poverty.

Why We Are Changing our Focus

Unitus’ mission is to reduce global poverty through economic empowerment and this is not changing. What is changing is our focus going forward.

Almost 10 years ago, Unitus identified the potential to dramatically catalyze expansion of the supply of quality microcredit, and subsequently developed and deployed a methodology we called ‘microcredit acceleration’ to realize this opportunity. We saw ourselves as a catalyst for the microfinance industry, hoping that our methods and practices would be adopted throughout the industry. We are proud of the substantial, concrete, positive impact that we’ve been able to make with your support in the operations and scale of our 22 microfinance partners, in the industry overall – and ultimately, in the lives of nearly 15 million of the world’s desperately poor.

After considerable review, we concluded earlier this year that we had achieved our specific microfinance objective: to demonstrate the scalability and commercial viability of microfinance in such a way as to influence the flow of commercial capital toward this crucial poverty alleviation tool. Our decision to curtail additional microcredit acceleration projects was based on strong recommendations from Unitus staff and other respected microfinance experts that sufficient commercial capital was available in many regions to fuel microfinance growth, with additional providers continually entering the field. Understanding this, we felt that we should be very careful in how we would continue to commit precious donor funds to a strategy that had largely achieved its intent.

This realization then necessitated a very difficult decision. Not wanting to unduly spend donor funds on unneeded administrative overhead, we felt an important obligation to scale back our internal operations while still fulfilling our existing commitments and preparing for the next phase of Unitus. This was a painful decision because it involved laying off employees, winding down projects and closing a 10-year chapter of Unitus leadership in microfinance. Painful as it was, we believed then – and continue to believe now – that it was the right thing to do. All this being said, while we tried to make this change in a completely professional and caring manner, we realize that we made mistakes in the way our change was announced and implemented. We apologize for any ill feelings or misperceptions this may have caused to those within and outside the Unitus organization. We could and should have done better executing this organizational shift.

Read the rest here on the Unitus site.

For any of you out there looking for last minute gifts, a lot of microfinance organizations offer gift cards.  Here are a couple I’ve heard of recently that are offering gift cards:

• Opportunity International
• Vittana
• Grameen
• Global Partnerships

Mifos.org is a diverse community of microfinance institutions, technology professionals, business people, volunteers, and contributors, guided by the vision to create and deploy technology that allows the microfinance industry to scale.  Recently they announced that on Tuesday December 21st, they will relese Mifos 2.0, a new version of their Management Information Software. Their initiative—the Mifos technology platform and related services—aims to provide the entire MFI industry with the technology it needs to scale. In collaboration with CGAP, the Ford Foundation and Microfinance Risk Management, Mifos 2.0 will enable MFIs to track and analye the poverty levels of their clients.  Additionally, Mifos 2.0 also offers the power of cloud computing, a centralized hosted solution through Amazon Web Services that allows microfinance organizations to streamline their business operations and scale up with the Mifos Cloud.

Here’s a video that gives more info:

Source

I found these videos over at DefeatingPoverty and urge you to watch them if you wish to better understand the Andra Pradesh situation in India. Enjoy!

Video 1: The microfinance mess: How it all began…

Video 2: The tragic turn of events: The reason…

Video 3: Killing MFIs is not the answer…

Kiva is hiring for another position, this is a great opportunity:

“The Role:
The Knowledge Manager is a member of both the Global Partner Operations and Global Partner Investments teams, working with key staff in each group to define and document processes and policies for internal and external stakeholders at Kiva.

The Knowledge Manager will be responsible for two key areas:

• Institutionalizing internal knowledge within Kiva’s partnership staff, to facilitate more efficient training of new personnel, and to ensure continuity of knowledge and methods within the partnerships groups.
• Developing training and reference materials for Kiva’s Field Partners, improving both the efficiency and quality of partner support by providing materials appropriate to Kiva’s partners around the globe.

As needed, the Knowledge Manager will bring on additional volunteer support to meet the needs defined in this role, as well as to support other staff needs in the department, and will provide regular supervision for these volunteers.

Core Responsibilities:

• Work closely with all key stakeholders on the partnerships department staff to learn current processes and define documentation framework. Primary audiences for documentation will include Kiva staff, Field Partner head office staff, Kiva Fellows, Kiva Volunteer Editors and Translators, and external auditors, as well as potentially Field Partner loan officers and Kiva borrowers. Types of documentation may include training manuals, content and loan policy guidelines, marketing/business development materials for new partnerships, partner-facing help center text, best practice guides to creating borrower stories and updates, internal procedure manuals, and process mapping.
• Develop review process for documentation by stakeholders.
• Manage vendors for professional translation of materials.
• Create process for regular maintenance of all key documentation.
• Continue to define additional documentation that would add value internally or to Kiva’s partners or volunteer stakeholders.
• Work with Kiva HR staff to bring on interns as needed for direct support of the Knowledge Manager role and to support key Global Partnerships staff, providing primary management for these interns.
• Create tracking system for Kiva Field Partner equipment requests, managing the requests, distribution, and tracking of equipment.

Required Skills and Qualifications:

• 5+ years of professional experience in collaborative, dynamic business environments
• Superior oral and written communication skills, with the ability to capture detailed process and communicate in an accessible manner to a range of audiences
• Proven aptitude for process discovery, definition, and documentation
• Strong technical skills, with experience managing a range of tools and systems. Excel, page layout, and Salesforce experience preferred but not required.
• Experience creating training documentation or e-learning modules a plus
• Knowledge of writing for low literacy audiences a plus
• Experience living or working in a developing country and/or working in microfinance a plus

Interested? Email cover letter and resume to mfoperations-jobs@kiva.org. Include in the subject line “Knowledge Manager.””

Hanson Wade is organizing the Investment and Innovation in Microfinance conference the 24-27^th of January in Singapore.  Microfinance in India has been a topic of conversation for all those in the industry over the last few weeks.  Recently, Amy Miller, the Programme Director for MicroFinance at Hanson Wade spoke to Suresh Krishna, Managing Director at Grameen Financial Services.

Suresh’s comments were very interesting, so we’ve compiled the highlights into an exclusive interview, which is available to download for free from the event website. Below is a snapshot of the interview:

First of all I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the work you are doing at the moment in Microfinance – could you tell me some more about your current portfolio? Sure, we provide financial services to close to half a million households.  We have a wide range of services like insurance, credit, credit plus services including water and sanitation loans and seasonal loans.  These are some of the services we provide.  We also have non-financial products in our programmes including the financial interest programme and we also do a lot of work on water and sanitation.

You mention some of the different services that you are working on including insurance, are services such as these becoming more popular? Yes pension and housing is what we are working on at the moment.   There are some specific regulations that affect the pension schemes so we are working on that and seeing how we can provide the pension service.  Housing is also something that we are working on now and is a huge focus in India.

What do you think is going to happen in MicroFinance over the next 12 months? Microfinance is going to be very different over the next 12 months compared to the 12 months that we have just had.  We will have far stricter regulations, and more of them.  I think funding to the sector will slow down.  There will be pressure to reduce the interest rates and restrictions on recovery and collection practices.  MFIs will start innovating to provide more client friendly products.  Advancements in technology such as mobile banking will enable us to reach the unreached and bring in cost effectiveness.  There will be greater financial inclusion in the country.

What does the future hold for Grameen Financial Services over the next 12 months? We need to push boundaries with our technology and our capital.  We need to design suitable products, test them and then roll them out.  A lot is going to change in the next 12 months because of high competition and changing regulations.

What is the one thing that people need to be aware of when starting to branch out into new Microfinancial products like housing or insurance? With different credit products like seasonal loans or housing loans, water and sanitation loans, we need to be sure to whom we are lending and we can’t over burden the client just because we want to provide credit

Download the full interview as well as the meeting agenda for the conference.

At the Asian Investment and Innovation in Microfinance conference, we will be addressing all of these issues with the industry’s leading figureheads.

• Regulatory changes: Benefit from an update on the regulatory architecture for Microfinance in Asia with Eric Duflos, Senior Microfinance Specialist at CGAP
• New financial services: From MicroInsurance to MicroPensions and MicroHousing, learn how to design and deliver new products
• Client protection: Hear from the Smart Campaign on the Responsibility MFIs have for their clients and the best way of protecting them
• Multiple borrowing: Join Microfinance Networks from across Asia as they discuss where the responsibility lies and how solutions can be implemented

Hanson Wade would like to offer Mykro readers an Exclusive 10% discount off the registration fee, to claim your discount please remember to quote your priority booking code: MYKRO when registering.

For those in Seattle and interested in microfinance, I hope you attend SeaMO’s Holiday Happy Hour at Barca tonight! Here are the logistics:

Where: Barca 1510 11th Avenue Seattle, WA

When: Thursday, Dec 16, 5:30 -7:30 pm

What: Get together one last time in 2010 to celebrate the progress toward financial inclusion and to hear about the upcoming year for SeaMo. Learn about the first ever Microfinance Unconference, big changes to our website, and other exciting initiatives on our horizon!

Here is the Letter from SeaMo Executive Director, Melisa Samuelson that was included in their email reminder this morning:

With the holiday season in full swing and 2011 right around the corner, I find myself reflecting on all that has been accomplished and all that remains to be done to ensure all people have the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.

This year, the movement has faced arguably the greatest challenges since the inception of modern microfinance over 30 years ago.  However, in spite of recent upheaval in India and periodic scrutiny in the world press, I truly believe that thesechallenges are opportunities to think more creatively about how to improve financial inclusion for the underserved and move us closer to eradicating poverty.  I believe this trying time will ultimately be understood as the beginning of the next great era of innovation in serving the poor.

Furthermore, I know a lot of smart people who are committed to the cause and haven’t lost sight of the original mission to eradicate poverty, and this gives me much hope.  You, our SeaMo community, through tweeting, subscribing to our newsletter, connecting with us on Facebook, and attending our events are a constant reminder of that fact.

With SeaMo being entirely run by volunteers, I’m also inspired by the dedication and the countless hours that our board members have invested this past year to connect the microfinance community.  While continuing our regular Microfinance & Microbrews events –a total of five this past year with Lumana, Totem, Save Together, Washington CASH, and Jolkona–we have also branched out and tried some new event formats this year, including:

• A fundraiser for Haiti raising over $3,500 for Fonkoze.org.
• A happy hour co-hosted with Vittana that raised $461 to fund a SeaMo lending group funding four students to continue their post-secondary education in Vietnam, Nicaragua, & Peru.
• A Mobile Banking Lecture Event with Ignacio Mas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• A Careers in Microfinance panel discussion & reception with the Global Business Center at the UW Foster School of Business.
• A panel discussion on Social Performance Metrics, co-hosted with Oikocredit, Global Washington, & the Global Business Center at the UW Foster School of Business.

And yet I´m reminded that there is a lot of work ahead of us in 2011, as 2.5 billion people still live on less than $2 a day, many lacking access to basic financial services.

To that end, in addition to our regular programming schedule, we are planning perhaps our most ambitious event yet–SeaChange, The Microfinance Unconference.  A facilitated, participant-driven “unconference” to generate solutions that will increase financial empowerment of the underserved and advance microfinance beyond microcredit, SeaChange will take place in June 2011 on the University of Washington campus (details to be announced in the next month).

In the coming year, we look forward to connecting with you whether online or offline, and advancing microfinance to truly serve the people that need it.  Here’s to a world without poverty!

Happy Holidays!

Melisa Samuelson
Executive Director, SeaMo

Lastly, here is a link to the Facebook event. Hope to see you there!!