On January 20, 2020 WFD NGO team had a meeting with organization’s consultancy board member, SDA Shirak Region branch manager and business expert Artashes Nikolyan.
The meeting was organized with Mr. Nikolyan’s initiation, who has done an analysis of microfinance activities, implemented by WFD in rural communities and has expressed his willingness to support our team in developing a special policy tool for us. As the result of this meeting, the main issues were crystalized, which are going to be included in our microfinance policy, namely:
- How we select our beneficiaries;
- Who are the key stakeholders in the area of microfinance in our province – organizations, banks, companies;
- What projects and ideas do they finance, what approaches and interest rates are applied by them;
- How will WFD NGO’s business grants be different, and what kind of advantages or disadvantages will they have;
- What criteria and approaches must be adopted for the business projects, being financed by WFD NGO;
- How to implement cross checking, in order to discover, for example, why the beneficiary has not started his/her project idea implementation up to the point of applying to WFD;
- Which are the WFD NGO priorities;
- How to avoid risks, and etc.
As the result of the meeting, it was decided to create a methodolody development team, which will first of all summarize the organization’s activities implemented in the area of microfinancing so far, will review the existing training materials and approaches, will revise the existing topics, business proposal form, criteria, beneficiary reporting and monitoring forms, protocols, etc. Only after completing the mentioned tasks, the draft version of WFD NGO’s microfinance policies handbook will be developed.
Business trainings and funding of the business ideas, which are planned for the nearest future, will be already conducted in accordance with the new policies. Piloting the draft version of the new policy and lessons learnt will allow us to revise it and turn it into a solid working tool for WFD NGO’s future programming.