Paper
In Search of "Sound Practices" for Microfinance
Why we cannot presume best practice really is 'best' for everyone
7 pages
This document aims to challenge the notion of "best practices" for all microfinance in favor of "sound practices" that are appropriate for particular organizational strategies and situations. A simple conceptual framework is offered to facilitate understanding of the current diversity of experiments with product-market pairs (e.g group-based lending to poor women struggling to earn enough for family survival). The paper concludes that:
- As the microfinance movement is still in a mode of intensive learning, we should not presume too soon what will be "best" for all product-market pairs;
- We can expect to discover a somewhat different set of sound practices for each distinct product-market pair.
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