Macquarie Group Foundation supports microfinance
The Macquarie Group Foundation has thrown its support behind Opportunity International Australia to undertake the next phase of its Social Performance Management micro-finance related project over the next two years.
Opportunity International's Social Performance Management (SPM) project started in 2008 and is a multi-year project aimed at enabling Opportunity's microfinance institution (MFI) partners to gauge the effectiveness of their work in three areas:
- delivery of services;
- their ability to reach target clients (those living in poverty);
- and the impact on clients' lives.
Opportunity said that, so far, the project had designed and piloted an innovative and effective program to assess client protection and outreach.
It said the support from the Macquarie Group Foundation would enable the roll-out of these two elements across MFI partners' operations, and to assist them in developing systems to assess how microfinance is transforming clients' lives.
The project will be rolled out initially in India and has the potential to assist its partners across the other regions in which it operates, namely Indonesia, the Philippines and Africa.
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