CARD leads other Philippine MFIs

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CARD leads other Philippine MFIs
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CARDs evolution
1989 CARD NGO
1997 CARD NGO CARD Bank
2003 CARD NGO CARD Bank CARD MBA CARD
Training Institute
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• While CARD is committed to employ a commercial
  approach to its microfinance operations, it will
  not abandon its original mission of serving the
  landless poor women.

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• ARE WE ON TRACK?

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• Selection Criteria
•  
• 1.Per capita income of not more than 28 per
  month
•  
• 2.Total productive assets of not more than 1,890
  
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• 3. Housing index of 6 points below
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THE CARD-CASHPOR Housing Index

• House Index is a proxy measurement of poverty.
  It is a simple score card on which points are
  allocated for each main component of the house
  i.e. size, materials of the roof, materials of
  the walls.
• CARD sets 6 points as the cut-off mark. This
  means that if the house scores more than 6
  points, the field staff classifies the house as
  ineligible and moves on to the next house. A
  house scoring 5 to 6 points is classified as
  moderately poor and 4 points or less is very
  poor. The very poor are given priority in
  follow-up interviews and motivation.

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THE CARD-CASHPOR Housing Index

• The House Index is done by field staff from
  the road side, without the necessity of
  interviewing, or even meeting members of the
  household.

The technical officer walks systematically
through the villages selected as having many poor
and poorest people, conducting an ocular survey
of the applicants house
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THE CARD-CASHPOR Housing Index

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THE CARD-CASHPOR Housing Index

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THE CARD-CASHPOR Housing Index
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THE CARD-CASHPOR Housing Index

• The following points about the CASHPOR Housing
  Index should be clearly understood
• It is a quick but crude measure of poverty
• It is therefore followed by checks on the
  poverty status of those passed as eligible, by
  looking at income and productive assets
• It is adapted to the house styles of each country

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• June 2001 IA Workshop
• Reviewed and defined CARDs impact
  priorities from client, management and staffs
  perspective
• Identified 4 core impact indicators
• housing, productive assets
• childrens education, and
• food security status

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• Food insecurity - directly meaningful
  indicator of poverty because not getting enough
  to eat is such a basic sign of absolute
  deprivation.
• Clients often cited improvement in member
  households diets as an important impact area.
  However, CARD has not systematically attempted to
  measure the food security of member households
  either as a proxy measure for poverty level or as
  an impact indicator.

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CARD-FFH Partnership

• As a part of the Credit with Education
  Program, Freedom from Hunger is working with CARD
  to develop monitoring systems and approaches,
  called progress tracking, that will help it
  better achieve its twin goals of sustainability
  and positive impacts.

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Progress tracking defined

• Progress tracking refers to an information
  system embedded in regular program operations and
  includes components focused on financial
  performance, supervision, service quality and
  client outcomes including satisfaction. Progress
  tracking uses a mixture of qualitative and
  quantitative methods to provide necessary
  information beyond the simple documentation of
  program inputs and activities.

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• Features of Progress Tracking
• Focus on quality of services, client satisfaction
  and impact
• Part of routine operations for staff motivation
  and improvement
• Use existing opportunities for collection
  exchange of information.
• Data collected/analyzed/reacted to by staff.
• Must be low-cost (financial and human resource)
  and easy to use.
• Use mixed methods quantitative qualitative.
• Foster an institutional culture of learning and
  client responsiveness.
• .

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CARD/FFH Client Assessment Techniques Workshop

• Workshop Logistics
• Venue Masbate Branch
• No. of Staff Participants 18
• Branches involved 8
• Training Duration 10 days
• Facilitators Barbara MkNelly-FFH
• CARD Research Team

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• Workshop Objectives
• To build staff skill and capacity to
  systematically solicit client information through
  focus group and short survey
• To analyze the operational implications of the
  gathered information

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• Operational Issue Explored
• Who is being reached by CARD services in terms of
  poverty level as measured by household food
  security?
• A short ten-question survey was used to
  address this first question with a random
  selection of newly trained members, the majority
  of whom had not yet received loans.

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• Food Security Survey
•   Two approaches used to classify the food
  security status of new CARD member households
• 1) a single-item question
• USDA Food Sufficiency QuestionOne-item
  scale
•   Which one of the following statements best
  describes the food eaten in your household?
• A) Enough and the kinds of food we want to
  eat
• B) Enough but not always the kinds of food
  we want
• C) Sometimes not enough to eat
• D) Often not enough to eat
•   Only households in category A are
  considered food-secure. Households in the B
  category have food supplies that are classified
  as barely adequate and households in the C and
  D categories are termed food-insufficient.
  Those indicating that they often did not have
  enough to eat (D) are identified as more severely
  constrained.

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• 2) a more detailed ten-item food security
  scale that includes questions to measure a number
  of specific conditions, experiences and behaviors
  that consistently characterize the phenomenon of
  food insecurity and hunger, such as
•        gt anxiety that the household food supply
  or money available to purchase food may be
  insufficient to meet basic needs
•         gt the experience of running out of food,
  without money to obtain more
•       gt perceptions by the respondent that the
  food eaten by household members was inadequate in
  quality or quantity
•         gtadjustments to normal food use,
  substituting fewer and cheaper foods than usual
•  

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• gt instances of reduced food intakeskipped
  meals, smaller meal sizeby adults and/or
  children and
•    gt consequences of reduced intake, such as the
  physical sensation of hunger or weight loss, for
  adults and/or children.
• Both approaches build upon food security
  surveys and scaling systems used domestically in
  the United States and in many international
  settings. Freedom from Hunger is planning to
  test it with several Credit with Education
  partners as a potentially low-cost and
  internationally meaningful proxy measure of
  poverty.

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• Single vs. Ten-item scale
• Fieldstaff felt the classifications based
  on single question were less reliable
• 1) single question was ordered first in the
  survey instrument. While introduction
  statesrecall period is the entire 12-month
  period, members were more likely to have
  responded in terms of their current situation
  bec this point has not been reinforced repeatedly
  as have later questions.
• 2) Over the course of the interview women
  would relax and give more honest responses.
• 3) Follow-up questions are more specific and
  require the respondent to consider whether a
  certain situation or condition was experienced
  detail and specificity of these questions
  resulted in more accurate and thoughtful
  responses.

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• Thus, the food security classifications based
  on the 10-item scale were used more extensively
  during the workshop analysis sessions than the
  single-item findings.
• With the 10-item food security
  classification system, each question is scored in
  terms of whether the household experienced that
  manifestation of food insecurity at least
  sometimes or more than one month during the
  preceding year. A score of 0 indicates that
  the household is food-secure throughout the year
  and a score of 10 represents the highest degree
  of food insecurity.

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With the UCD approach only households that
reported no experience with anxiety of food
limitations due to lack of money are categorized
as food-secure. With the USDA approach, two of
the ten items could be affirmative and the
household would still be considered
food-secure. The UC Davis approach also
suggests, for simplicity, grouping the households
into three rather than four groupings since it is
relatively rare that households report as many as
nine or ten affirmatives associated with
severe hunger.

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• HOUSE INDEX VS. FOOD SECURITY SURVEY (1)
• Food security survey provided more accurate
  information about the poverty level of members
  than the means test
• the survey included multiple questions about the
  families food situation
• they were given assurances that the information
  was confidential and would not influence access
  to program services.
• Since potential members know means test as
  eligibility criteria, a potential m ember might
  say the house they live in is not their own or
  under-report information about assets and income.
  
• TOs verify verify housing information with
  neighbors or even children.

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HOUSE INDEX VS. FOOD SECURITY SURVEY (2)
TOs challenges with the food security survey
Observed that some women were shy, especially
at the beginning of the interview, and in cases
when the family was very poor. Staff tried to be
sensitive to clients situation, set a tone and
use a manner to reduce nervousness and encourage
honesty.
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Fundamental challenges raised by staff and
clients

• While the food security results provide positive
  evidence that CARD services are reaching poor
  members, two aspects of program dynamics
  highlight the challenges for maintaining this
  depth of outreach.
• 1) majority of the eight Masbate branches
  were expanding program eligibility to
  second-priority households
• Older branches facing a challenge in meeting
  their targets for new members bec over time,
  membership drop-out and the experience of Center
  problems can make it difficult to recruit
  sufficient numbers of new members from the
  desired relatively poor clientele, viz sample of
  58 new member households, 85.5 percent were
  classified as first priority while almost 15
  percent were second priority members

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Fundamental challenges raised by staff and
clients

• 2)    While CARD for the most part is very
  successful in making program services available
  to very poor households through the means test
  and the considerable effort made to operate in
  difficult-to-reach areas, another challenge is
  whether the relatively poorest members are able
  to maintain their membership in the program,
  particularly over time.
• very poor households are most vulnerable to
  economic shocks and crises such as an illness in
  the family or a downturn in economic conditions
  and have the fewest alternative means to maintain
  good repayment performance in the event of these
  periods of difficulty.

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Fundamental challenges raised by staff and
clients

• The poverty and need in the rural, inaccessible
  areas is greatest but the economic opportunities
  and returns to both members and CARD are less.
• In general new member households in rural,
  inaccessible areas had higher food insecurity
  than those in urban and rural, accessible areas.
  Rural, inaccessible areas are characterized by
  the fewest income-generating opportunities, the
  poorest market access and relatively higher
  transport costs for members own products and for
  the products households in these areas purchase.
  

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Thank you for listening.