HAND IN HAND GOES TO BRAZIL

In an exciting new development in South-South collaboration, Hand in Hand has signed an agreement with Visão Mundial (World Vision), Brazil, to launch a joint project for poverty reduction. The project will work in partnership with Agência Nacional de Desenvolvimento Microempresarial (ANDE) in North-Eastern Brazil.

The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of Inter American Development Bank (IDB) has recognised that the Hand in Hand model is useful and replicable, and was the initiator and funder of this project.

The project will adapt Hand in Hand’s Indian model of poverty reduction and employment generation to improve conditions in this impoverished region of Brazil. The idea is to create a regional network of local grassroots organizations tied to Visão Mundial and ANDE. This network will be provided with technical support and microcredit to help increase income generating opportunities and to gradually scale up the programme. The self help groups will be recreated here as Local Units for Income Generating Opportunities (LUO) as the basic unit for mobilisation and training. In the final stages, the programme will spread out the model in order to mobilise alternative funds for lending and technical assistance to ensure sustainability.

The South Asian model, which is being adapted to the Brazilian context, uses the empowerment approach, which not only focuses on micro lending but also on mobilisation of clients (mostly women) around daily savings, as an entry point for loan eligibility. This strategy also provides multiple services to the clients – literacy, financial and enterprise training and skills building. It recognises that the poor borrower has wider needs than a mere access to finance, and is distinguished by its success in reaching down to the poorest, as in the case of BRAC in Bangladesh and Hand in Hand in Tamil Nadu, India.

The credit-plus approach gives technical assistance, access to finance, market and industry linkages to the poor entrepreneur. In Brazil, Hand in Hand will act as the inspirational catalyst and provide much of the key technical assistance.

This will be the first programme in Brazil that will involve an entire region at a low cost in an integrated collaboration between different stakeholders, and with the aim of a large scale impact.