Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category

Microfinance Focus, Aug. 17, 2009: Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital firm focusing on poverty in South Asia and East Africa, announced on Monday the list of new fellows selected for 2010. The program received 370 applications from 49 countries, a statement said. The program will have an eight-week training course followed by a nine-month assignment with one of Acumen's portfolio companies in health care, housing, water and energy. The Fund's 2010 Fellows are: Full story

Microfinance Focus, Aug. 14, 2009: The inaugural African Diaspora Marketplace (ADM) call for proposals has exceeded expectations by collecting 733 business proposals, said a press release. The ADM is a business entrepreneurship program fostering economic development ideas from U.S.-based African diaspora to create plans for sustainable start-up and established businesses in 19 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. A collaboration between Western Union and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the ADM aims to leverage the know-how and commitment of diaspora communities to help address poverty and unemployment issues in the region. Full story

Microfinance Focus, Aug. 13, 2009: Pondicherry University will hold its third annual international conference on microfinance from January 22 to 24 next year and has called for research papers. The conference is being held every year by the university's School of Management, Department of Commerce to bring together policy-makers and researchers from educational institutions and universities in India and abroad. Research papers by professionals from banks, non-governmental agencies, microfinance institutions, regulatory agencies, financial advice domains, insurance agencies and self help groups -- are invited to reach the university before Dec. 14, 2009. Full story

Microfinance Focus, Aug. 14, 2009: BizEvents.Asia is organising the "Mobiles and Money India" conference in Mumbai on November 23 and 24 to focus on strategies for increasing the access to financial services and products to India’s under-banked people. The conference aims at bringing the mobile payments and payments ‘ecosystem’ -- mobile operators, banks, microfinance institutions and non-governmental organisations and thrid-party vendors -- together. It will discuss the strategy, innovation and emerging business models for mobile banking and payments in India. Full story

MF Focus, July 27, 2009: The July issue of Microfinance Focus, an online monthly digitial magazine, is released on Monday, with special focus on technology in microfinance sector. "While it would be impossible to highlight every technology option that an MFI could choose to implement, in this, our first IT-focused issue, we have decided to present editorials, ... Full story

MicrofinanceFocus, July 18, 2009: A two day International Conference on the “Emerging concept of Islamic Microfinance” will be held in Islamabad from July 21 to 22. Islamic microfinance aims at lending not money but providing necessary goods, equipment and machinery to the clients to run the business at micro level. Full story

MF Focus, July 7, 2009: The next Microfinance India Summit will be held in New Delhi from October 26 to 28 and this year's theme will be "Doing Good and Doing Well: The need for balance". The summit will focus on providing financial services to low-income groups, organisers said. The event, sixth in a series of annual summits organised by ACCESS Development Services, a microfinance solutions provider, will draw diverse perspectives of the future of microcredit in India. Full story

Microfinance Focus, July 10, 2009: Indian health insurance industry aims to cover 500 million population over the next five years, said V. Vaidyanathan, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance managing director, at a FICCI-organised conference in New Delhi on Friday. Dr Rudiger Krech of GTZ pointed out that economic development and health insurance go hand in hand. He stressed the need for a comprehensive package which would cater the risks associated with  unemployment, injury, old age among others. He reiterated the need to develop social infrastructure like proper sewerage, education, pure water and said health insurance  is intricately associated with all these efforts. Factually speaking,  moneylenders who charge more that 25% interest are responsible for putting people back in poverty, he noted. Full story

By Dr. Arvind Ashta , Burgundy School of Business -------- MF Focus, July 10, 2009: Burkina Faso is apprehensive that the Millennium goals of reducing poverty by half by 2015 would clearly not be met for Africa, in the wake of financial crisis. The ex-prime Minster of the Ivory Coast and former governor of the Central Bank of the BCEAO, Konan Bany, explained that the first effect of the international financial crisis has been reduction in exports followed by widespread unemployment. To overcome it, the need for self-employment has become more acute, necessitating the need for microfinance, he said at the fourth African Microfinance Conference, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries of the world, from July 7 to 10. Full story

INDIA's FICCI is organizing a conference on health insurance on July 10. The focus of this year's conference is to exchange information on issues like identification of guidelines for hospitalization, standardization of critical illness definitions, standardization of list of excluded (non-medical) expenses in hospital indemnity policy and to explore the ways of insurance penetration in the country, especially among the rural poor. Full story