Isabelle Barres appointed as the new Director of Smart Campaign

Microfinance Focus, Aug 25, 2010: Smart Campaign, a global initiative housed at the Centre for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International  which is committed to embedding client protection practices into microfinance institutional culture has recently appointed Ms. Isabelle Barres as its new Campaign Director.

The current Campaign Director, Ms. Robin Ratcliffe will be leaving the post on September 1, 2010 to lead the 50^th Anniversary year of ACCION International which will take place in 2011. Announcing his exit, Ms. Robin said, “Thank you to the entire microfinance community for embracing The Smart Campaign so enthusiastically.  I am sure that over the next 2.5 years the microfinance industry will fulfill the vision of the Campaign Steering Committee, to make microfinance the gold standard of client treatment, one that can be demonstrated to the broader financial community”.

Ms. Isabelle has a distinguished career in microfinance at The MIX (Microfinance Information Exchange) and more recently with Kiva where she has built and managed Kiva’s extensive partner network.  Having long been involved in performance assessment and management, she brings special skills to the directorship, that are especially valuable as we move ever deeper into the implementation stage of the Campaign.

 The Smart Campaign embodies a set of core principles for the treatment of microfinance clients – the minimum standards that clients should expect to receive when doing business with a microfinance institution. The principles at the heart of Smart Microfinance includes avoidance of over-indebtedness, transparent and responsible pricing, appropriate collections practices, ethical staff behaviour, mechanisms for redress of grievances and privacy of client data among others.

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