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Microfinance and street children: is microfinance an appropriate tool to address the street children issue ?( Télécharger le fichier original )par Badreddine Serrokh Solvay Business School - Free University of Brussels - Management engineer degree 2006 |
2. OBJECTIVESMany studies explored the financial needs of poor people - but with a focus on adults, not children. It has been demonstrated that adults need financial services for preventing - ex ante risk management strategies- and coping -ex post coping strategy- with risks, and do not only need the traditional mono-product working capital loan (Wright, 2000)39(*). Furthermore, Rutherford (1999) categorized this demand into three main components: life-cycle, emergencies and opportunities. Life-cycle demand refers to the predictable and anticipated events that hit poor households, such as Christmas, Eid, childbirth, education, etc. Emergencies are, on the opposite, unpredictable events which create a sudden and unanticipated need for a large sum of money, such as employment loss, theft, floods, etc. Finally, opportunities to invest in an existing or new business or to buy land or other productive assets may arise and may need large lump sums of money (Rutherford, 1999; Matin, Hulme and Rutherford, 1999). When talking about street children financial services needs, a new challenge is facing us, as very few literature is exploring that topic. The common idea about street children is that they are one of the poorest communities in the world, being often qualified as `destitute', and even `criminals'. They are therefore perceived as too poor and too young to be forward looking, having no money management strategies, being irresponsible as they spend all their earnings at the end of the day. So, why to offer savings or credit services, as they do not need it. This chapter will therefore have three specific objectives and it will identify: 1. How do street children get money and why do they need money? 2. Why do street children need savings? 3. Why do street children need credit? 3. METHODOLOGYIn order to meet our three specific objectives, we decided to make a zoom on street children of Dhaka already benefiting, through Padakhep, from access to savings and credit. BOX 2.1. : STREET CHILDREN CATEGORIES - PADAKHEP / ARISE TYPOLOGY CATEGORY 1: WHO WORK AND LIVE ON THE STREET DAY AND NIGHT WITHOUT THEIR FAMILY ü Children who either have their families in the villages, either left their families in Dhaka city or either lost their families. CATEGORY 2: WHO WORK AND LIVE ON THE STREET DAY AND NIGHT WITH THEIR FAMILY ü Children who are living with their families in a temporary house made of plastic or bamboo; they are found on the embankment of any metropolitan area of Bangladesh. CATEGORY 3: WHO WORK ON THE STREET DURING THE DAY AND RETURN TO THEIR RELATIVES AT NIGHT ü Children who live in Dhaka with their uncles, grandmothers, aunts, etc. CATEGORY 4: WHO WORK AND LIVE ON THE STREET DURING THE DAY AND RETURN TO THEIR FAMILY AT NIGHT ü Children who live on the street and work there during the daytime but return to their parents at night ( settled generally in the slums of Dhaka) Padakhep chose the definition that appears to be the most adequate to the Bangladeshi context and defines them as «Disadvantaged Children aged below 18 years, who pass most of their time on the street either for work or for any other purposes». However, the organization views street children more critically and segregates them into four specific categories, following the ARISE classification (from the most vulnerable to the less vulnerable). Those four categories were found in three different drop-in-centres. As pointed in our Methodology section, we addressed those 4 categories using focus group discussions in order to assess their demand. The following table gives the total number of participants that took part in our research:
Moreover, we added 2 PRA sessions, with a total number of 38 participants, in order to assess their perception of money, credit and savings. * 39 Quoted in Iglebaeck and al. (2005) |
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