The Microfinance Investment and Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA) Board, and specifically the Minister of Relief, Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD), has recently felt that MISFA should be promoting a double bottom line in microfinance. It has therefore asked the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) to assist MISFA in improving systems for tracking and monitoring the socio-economic status of microfinance clients so that Microfinance Institutions MFIs) complement their reporting on their financial health with a reporting on their social performance.
CGAP has contracted the Institute of Development Studies to develop several simple indicators based on the Afghan context, that will report on four key issues:
- to what degree MFIs serve poor people
- changes in economic conditions of clients
- school attendance of children of clients disaggregated by sex
- access to basic health care services.
IDS will also prepare a questionnaire and a sample design that a local survey firm will use to create a baseline database. IDS will conduct an analysis of this dataset so that this benchmark data can be used to determine progress over the years.
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