If, as Muhammad Yunus says, poverty should belong to museums, then development finance institutions must take one small step further, albeit a challenging one, towards that museum where poverty will be a thing of the past. With a development perspective on its heels, development finance institutions and their strategic partners must carry the torch of responsibility in crossing the threshold where there will be no stopping - not for the institution, not for its micro-clients, not for their poor communities.
No borders! Where funding is a need, development finance institutions must provide. If capacity building is the issue, training and business development services ought to be provided. As clients grow and ask for expanded BDS, innovate is the call of the day. When challenges rain, fortitude and resolve must pour. With the 2008 recession segueing onto 2009, with bank closures, petro price circuses, natural disasters and all, challenges are aplenty. One cannot help but wish for the good days of grade-school-of-old. Those public school grounds with bamboo trees for landscaping provide a lesson in resilience as bamboo trunks sway in all direction, bend and bow, but never breaking.
That resilience remains to be prevalent. Even as development finance institutions reel from various tests of strength and conviction, they remain resilient. They rise from the challenges, stronger than ever, never minding the borders, the boundaries that, left on their own, would have left one staggering, stagnating. Move on!
In the process of strengthening micro- and development finance institutions and supporting their end-clients, the building of economically self-sustainable communities is ensured. Now is the time to measure one's self against true social performance vis-a-vis fair economic development.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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