We visited the Micro Finance Institution (MFI) Grameen Koota. Grameen Koota follows the Grameen Bank methodology to provide loans to the rural poor. These are small collateral free loans provided to poor women. Grameen Koota offers a variety of loan types for various purposes including 1,000 rupe emergency loans to 25,000 rupe income generation loans. They also have programs to help people get toilets, water connections to their homes and low smoke coke stoves. Sanitation, clean water, and in home smoke from cooking fires are all huge health risks in India. (I borrowed this picture):
We went out to a very small rural village where many women have taken loans to improve their silk production. Most of the women have also taken other loans for the improvements listed above. All of the women emphatically said that the loans from Grameen Koota have significantly improved their lives. These women were also clearly poorer in general than the women we saw in the urban area - very little jewelry, many were quite thin, and none were taking education loans.
Grameen Koota was the first MFI in India to be fully certified to use Grameen Foundation's Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). The idea of the PPI is to provide MFI's with a simple tool for them to measure the actual poverty level of their customer base. There are 10 questions a customer has to answer at the time of a loan application and each time a new loan is given. The questions include things like how many children are in the household, do the children attend school, what type of home do they have, do they have/how many ceiling fans, TV's, washers, refrigerators, etc.
One interesting factoid I learned is that the poor in India are more likely to have a TV than a refrigerator. There is a simple explanation: if you can't afford to buy more than your food for today, you don't need a refrigerator. And believe me, there are no leftovers.
There are three levels of certification: data collection, electronic collection of data, and analysis of data. Grameen Koota has the third level. Through the PPI data, Grameen Koota can show what their customer base looks like. These numbers are from memory, so they might not be perfect, but they give an indication. Around 12% of all of Grameen Koota's customers fall below India's poverty index of $0.93 household income per day, 65% fall below the international poverty index of $1.25 per day, and 78% fall below $2.00 household income per day. Note that the categories as you go up are cumulative.
By looking at the PPI data where clients have multiple PPI scores, Grameen Koota can see that this population has significantly improved their PPI's with $0.93 household income per day improving them most starting at 13% and falling to 11%, $1.25 per day income households dropping from 72% to 63% and $2.00 household income per day dropping from 78% to 70%. Unfortunately the data of multiple PPI's is currently limited mostly because data collection started only a few years ago. Another problem with the data is that it does not indicate causality. Still these are pretty exciting statistics that show that things are improving at least for some of the poor.
By the way, if anyone has the precise numbers, please comment.
Here are some pictures from Grameen Koota:
Here are a few pictures of the villagers showing us the silk production:
We went out to a very small rural village where many women have taken loans to improve their silk production. Most of the women have also taken other loans for the improvements listed above. All of the women emphatically said that the loans from Grameen Koota have significantly improved their lives. These women were also clearly poorer in general than the women we saw in the urban area - very little jewelry, many were quite thin, and none were taking education loans.
Grameen Koota was the first MFI in India to be fully certified to use Grameen Foundation's Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). The idea of the PPI is to provide MFI's with a simple tool for them to measure the actual poverty level of their customer base. There are 10 questions a customer has to answer at the time of a loan application and each time a new loan is given. The questions include things like how many children are in the household, do the children attend school, what type of home do they have, do they have/how many ceiling fans, TV's, washers, refrigerators, etc.
One interesting factoid I learned is that the poor in India are more likely to have a TV than a refrigerator. There is a simple explanation: if you can't afford to buy more than your food for today, you don't need a refrigerator. And believe me, there are no leftovers.
There are three levels of certification: data collection, electronic collection of data, and analysis of data. Grameen Koota has the third level. Through the PPI data, Grameen Koota can show what their customer base looks like. These numbers are from memory, so they might not be perfect, but they give an indication. Around 12% of all of Grameen Koota's customers fall below India's poverty index of $0.93 household income per day, 65% fall below the international poverty index of $1.25 per day, and 78% fall below $2.00 household income per day. Note that the categories as you go up are cumulative.
By looking at the PPI data where clients have multiple PPI scores, Grameen Koota can see that this population has significantly improved their PPI's with $0.93 household income per day improving them most starting at 13% and falling to 11%, $1.25 per day income households dropping from 72% to 63% and $2.00 household income per day dropping from 78% to 70%. Unfortunately the data of multiple PPI's is currently limited mostly because data collection started only a few years ago. Another problem with the data is that it does not indicate causality. Still these are pretty exciting statistics that show that things are improving at least for some of the poor.
By the way, if anyone has the precise numbers, please comment.
Here are some pictures from Grameen Koota:
Here are a few pictures of the villagers showing us the silk production:
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