The internal learning system?assessing impact while addressing participant learning needs

Abstract

The Internal Learning System or ILS is a participatory impact assessment and planning system for microfinance and livelihood programmes primarily designed to meet the learning needs of programme participants, village groups and operational field staff. The medium of the system's pictorial impact diaries or workbooks is an empowering tool for poor, illiterate participants and village groups to track and analyse changes in their lives and to use the understanding to alter their strategies as they participate in the economy and interact with actors and institutions in the wider community. Field staff use the system to track the patterns of lagging and excelling performance across participants and village groups and to analyse the reasons for the variation in impact performance. Programme managers at field team and headquarter levels benefit from the internal learning by staff and participants to 'improve' programme processes, while also using it to meet additional impact assessment objectives including 'external proving' to funders that the programme is having its intended impact. Because of its participatory nature in which participants themselves keep their own impact diary or workbook, not only tracking changes in their lives but also troubleshooting negative outcomes, planning remedies and reflecting on training inputs, ILS can also help enhance empowerment outcomes. This paper presents quantitative results and qualitative experiences of economic and social empowerment outcomes from a large Indian microfinance organization that has been using the system in a large field trial over the past two years.

What Impact Does Microfinance Have on Rural Livelihood? A Comparison of Governmental and Non-Governmental Microfinance Programs in Bangladesh

“…This implies that over the course of the study, people became more conscious about the quality of their medical services. Noponen (2005) found that a microfinance program had a positive impact on treatment in the home and also in the community. It is of note that there were very few respondents who failed to improve their medical services due to their faith in pir/fakir/quack, etc., and these were more frequent in the microfinance group than in controls (MR x ¼ 0:221 and NMR x ¼ 0:179, p < 0.048, Tables 4 and 6).…”

Financial Inclusion & Social Capital A Case Study of SGSY Beneficiaries in Kashmir Valley

“…Many theorists believe that the most important component in multidimensional poverty mix is 'access to finance'; and the present study, in line with the notion, tries to assess the impact of financial inclusion on the socio-political empowerment of beneficiaries (NEPONEN, 2003;SRINIVASAN;KUPPUSAMY, 2010;DUNFORD, 1998DUNFORD, , 1999PITT et al, 2003).…”

“…Evidence also suggest that membership has lead to an increase in the healthcare, food and education spending along other expenditures (NEPONEN, 2003;SRINIVASAN;KUPPUSAMY, 2010;DUNFORD, 1998DUNFORD, , 1999PITT et al, 2003). Pitt et al (2003) however found that the impact on children's health is significant for female borrowings while as the same is missing for male borrowers and even negative in some cases.…”

“…Pitt et al (2003) however found that the impact on children's health is significant for female borrowings while as the same is missing for male borrowers and even negative in some cases. Noponen (2005) shows that the programme specifically for rural women clients in Tamil Nadu, India, has a positive impact on livelihood, social status and other socio-political indicators of their clients which is more likely to increase as they spend much time with the programme. The study further shows that the clients have seen an increase in the ownership of assets.…”

Cross-Sectional Impact Analysis: Bias from Dropouts

“…In an attempt to conduct impact evaluations with limited resources, some organizations now use a cross-sectional empirical methodology (hereinafter referred to as the "cross-sectional approach") developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), under its Assessing the Impact of Microenterprise Services (AIMS) program. A few examples of such studies using this methodology also exist in academic journals and conference papers (Copestake, Bhalotra and Johnson 2001;Maldonado, Gonzales-Vega and Romero 2002;Noponen 2005). 2 The crosssectional approach estimates the impact of microfinance programs on clients by comparing incoming clients to veteran clients.…”