Posted by: Katherine Oglietti and Mike Krell
An ID-Ghana client and her wares
Godknows Kporha, Social Mission Manager, Initiative Development Ghana
In response to the rapidly growing population in Ghana’s capital city, fed by a large influx of migrants from rural villages, Initiative Development Ghana (ID-Ghana) caters its financial and non-financial services to deprived areas in Accra. Its approach is to target the poorest urban neighborhoods to build a more inclusive economy. It offers a combination of not only credit but also savings, insurance, and trainings to its "partners" (i.e., clients) with the contention that microcredit is a relevant but incomplete method to effectively respond to the global problem of poverty.
MIX: In ID-Ghana’s Social Performance Report, you report offering adult education training among other non-financial services. Which learning areas do these training sessions cover? How many of your clients participate in these trainings? Have you conducted any assessment as to whether clients have incorporated the skills they learned into their daily lives?
Mr. Kporha: Our trainings fall under two main headings: business and social. In our business trainings, we cover topics such as costing and pricing, customer care, business opportunity identification, record keeping, and credit management. Social topics include personal hygiene, national health insurance, domestic violence, and malaria prevention and management. These trainings have been integrated into the methodology for our new group loan product, Onipa Nua, and are compulsory for partners.
We closely monitor training attendance. In March 2010, 3,249 people received training from ID-Ghana, out of a total of 3,991 active borrowers. And while we have not yet performed an impact assessment of this new training regime, anecdotal evidence suggests that these trainings are having a positive outcome on our partners. We feel that these trainings have equipped partners with much-needed skills and knowledge regarding the effective management of loans, among other things, and that this is reflected in greatly increased loan repayment rates.
MIX: Do you offer these trainings directly or with other partners?
Mr. Kporha: Business and social trainers are part of the ID-Ghana team. However, on some topics we partner with local NGOs that focus on specific areas. For example, on the malaria issue, we work with Infanta Malaria, a local NGO that provides us with posters and mosquito nets.
MIX: We read that you facilitate registration of your clients with the National Health Insurance Scheme. What are the challenges faced by the poor in Ghana regarding access to health insurance?
Mr. Kporha: ID-Ghana partially subsidizes the cost of partners who subscribe to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on a declining percentage over three years. Partners get 50% of the cost subsidized in the first year, 33% in the second year, and 25% in the last year. This allows our partners to register initially for as little as 11 cedis (US$7.75) for an adult and 2 cedis for a child (US$1.41). Our hope is that by the third year they’ll have understood the benefits of health insurance.
There is also a secondary benefit to our approach, as registering can be quite daunting and bureaucratic for our partners, some of whom are illiterate. Rather than bring our partners to the NHIS offices, we invite NHIS officers out to the field to aid our partners in filling out the necessary forms, collect any remaining premiums, and provide passport photos. The NHIS officers take this information back to their offices and process our partners’ insurance cards. These cards are then sent back to us and we distribute them to our partners.
MIX: According to the Social Performance Report, ID-Ghana targets the urban poor. It also developed its own poverty assessment tool (PAT). Can you give us some examples of the indicators you are assessing? How often do you track information about the poverty status of your clients? Do you have any estimates as to what percentage of your clients have moved above the national poverty line?
Mr. Kporha: We developed our own PAT in 2008 with the help of Entrepreneurs du Monde. The questionnaire has seven main categories including housing, health, and education. Indicators include, for example, the number of children in the partners’ household who attend school, whether or not the family has mosquito nets, and how often they eat protein each week. After some testing, we extended the PAT to all branches in late 2009, and now plan to administer it to all our partners for their first loan cycle and then every odd cycle. At present, we have captured information on over 500 partners, so we have a clear picture of their poverty levels but will need to wait until the end of 2010 in order to assess any change in their living conditions.
Mr. Kporha: Business and social trainers are part of the ID-Ghana team. However, on some topics we partner with local NGOs that focus on specific areas. For example, on the malaria issue, we work with Infanta Malaria, a local NGO that provides us with posters and mosquito nets.
MIX: We read that you facilitate registration of your clients with the National Health Insurance Scheme. What are the challenges faced by the poor in Ghana regarding access to health insurance?
Mr. Kporha: ID-Ghana partially subsidizes the cost of partners who subscribe to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on a declining percentage over three years. Partners get 50% of the cost subsidized in the first year, 33% in the second year, and 25% in the last year. This allows our partners to register initially for as little as 11 cedis (US$7.75) for an adult and 2 cedis for a child (US$1.41). Our hope is that by the third year they’ll have understood the benefits of health insurance.
There is also a secondary benefit to our approach, as registering can be quite daunting and bureaucratic for our partners, some of whom are illiterate. Rather than bring our partners to the NHIS offices, we invite NHIS officers out to the field to aid our partners in filling out the necessary forms, collect any remaining premiums, and provide passport photos. The NHIS officers take this information back to their offices and process our partners’ insurance cards. These cards are then sent back to us and we distribute them to our partners.
MIX: According to the Social Performance Report, ID-Ghana targets the urban poor. It also developed its own poverty assessment tool (PAT). Can you give us some examples of the indicators you are assessing? How often do you track information about the poverty status of your clients? Do you have any estimates as to what percentage of your clients have moved above the national poverty line?
Mr. Kporha: We developed our own PAT in 2008 with the help of Entrepreneurs du Monde. The questionnaire has seven main categories including housing, health, and education. Indicators include, for example, the number of children in the partners’ household who attend school, whether or not the family has mosquito nets, and how often they eat protein each week. After some testing, we extended the PAT to all branches in late 2009, and now plan to administer it to all our partners for their first loan cycle and then every odd cycle. At present, we have captured information on over 500 partners, so we have a clear picture of their poverty levels but will need to wait until the end of 2010 in order to assess any change in their living conditions.
***
More information on ID-Ghana can be found on their MIX Market profile. Their latest annual report describes the switch to Onipa Nua methodology and its positive impact on the institution’s portfolio-at-risk.
Comments