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Making microfinance accessible to persons with disabilities: awareness and attitudes among Indian microfinance institutions

GUPTA, Vin
May 2014

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This research focuses on three stakeholders: Microfinance Institutions (MFIs), Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and non-disabled clients. It attempts to highlight the following:

  • Understanding of MFIs about disability, their perceptions of persons with disabilities, and their preparedness to include them as potential clients
  • Concerns and apprehensions of PWD to becoming potential MFI clients
  • Views of non-disabled clients on including PWD in their groups

The study investigates the knowledge and the perceptions about disability among each stakeholder group and attempts to elucidate how that impacts the ability of PWD to access microfinance services. Four microfinance institutions of different geographic areas were studied. The survey inolved 1,000 people of whom 57 were disabled. 

A new financial access frontier - people with disabilities

GOLDSTEIN, Josh
June 2010

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This note provides the background for a roundtable discussion held on June 18, 2010 in Washington, DC, convened by the Center for Financial Inclusion (CFI), in partnership with the Disability and Development Team of the World Bank, at which representatives from microfinance institutions and Disability Organizations deliberated on how they can best contribute to increasing access to financial services for poor people with disabilities worldwide. After a brief discussion of the challenge and the opportunity, the note advances several working hypotheses about steps the microfinance industry could take. 

Funding for self-employment of people with disabilities : grants, loans, revolving funds or linkage with microfinance programmes

DE KLERK, Ton
March 2008

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"In 2005, Handicap International commissioned a study on the practices of funding for self-employment activities of people with disabilities (PWD), with a special focus on access to microfinance. The overall goal of the study was to produce a framework document highlighting good practices, strategies, tools and operational methods that guarantee the efficiency and sustainability of self-employment projects for PWDs. The first phase of the study consisted of a literature review and a worldwide survey. Through this first phase the research team identified the most innovative programmes for further analysis through field visits. In the second phase field visits were conducted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nicaragua and Uganda, while regional workshops were organised in Dhaka and Nairobi. Phase three involved consolidation and analysis of the information and finally drafting of the framework document. This paper summarises the findings and good practices as presented in the framework document, based on the results of the literature review, the survey and the field research. It is not a scientific paper, i.e. it doesn't contain a discussion of the literature reviewed or systematic reference to sources, the same as the document on which it is based, as it is primarily meant for practitioners"
Leprosy Review, Vol 79, Issue 1

Disability and social change : a South African agenda

WATERMEYER, Brian
et al
2006

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This book has been produced to promote the social rights of people with disabilities. It presents extensive research on the South African context of disability and society and draws upon contributions from a diverse range of specialists in the field. A key aim of the text is to unite the disability movement in South Africa through research discourse, as a means to drive processes of social change. Key sections of the book cover: theoretical approaches to disability; governmental and societal responses to disability; disability and education; disability poverty and social security; disability and service provision; disability and human spaces. This book would be of interest to anybody working in the fields of disability, development and social inclusion

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