Mzungu in Kasungu

Mzungu in Kasungu
Daniella in Kasungu

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Latest SPM adventures

It’s been a non-stop Social Performance Management (SPM) adventure the last few weeks! Chiko, the SPM Officer, and I have been travelling all over the country facilitating workshops for all the field staff in the various regions. With the help of a training committee – composed of our star trainers from each region – the workshops have allowed our staff to focus on key SPM issues using role play, small group discussions, games and songs. The staff came up with all manner of good ideas, including using secret voting for groups to screen potential clients to ensure group quality, providing more standardised guidance to groups in how to formulate their Constitution which governs the way the group runs, and ensuring clients take responsibility for each other’s loan sizes and visit each others’ businesses to check on progress. The picture shows a training committee member explaining ones of the games.



We’ve also gone to all the regions assessing how the two new loan products that are being piloted are faring. One is aimed at reaching the poorest and the other involves longer repayment intervals. Generally they are progressing well, though a few tweaks are necessary.

Just to illustrate that you never quite know what’s going to happen on any given day, we were sitting with one of our groups getting a sense of how their businesses were progressing, whether they had faced any challenges and the like. Suddenly out of nowhere a small copse of trees ran towards us! (see picture) These ‘trees’, I was afterwards told, are young men in the community undergoing an initiation ceremony into adulthood. The unexpected is a part of most days here – though no day more so than that one!


And back to work..! Finally we’ve been checking up on how the poverty assessment work has been doing in Central Region. This is the assessment we’re doing using Grameen Foundation’s Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). Again, overall the trend is positive, though we need to fine tune some issues, for example Loan Officers not doing the assessment at the new loan application meeting but ahead of time, meaning that clients are more likely to make themselves seem poor to access the loan.

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