Microfinance and street children: is microfinance an appropriate tool to address the street children issue ?

2.4. Case study: Padakhep Manabik Unnayan Kendra (PMUK)

Our case study has the objective to test our proposed model, by first analysing the program profile in order to assess whether the organisation follows our model; our second objective will be to analyse the effectiveness and sustainability of the program in order to determine and then to move on to the validity of our model, and make recommendations. Our approach can be schematized as followed:

Fig. 3.7: Case study framework

Poorly/Not effective and sustainable

Effective and sustainable

Poorly/Not effective and sustainable

Model valid

Model not valid

PADAKHEP

Does not follow our model

Follows our model

Effective and sustainable

Model valid

Program profile

(1)

Program effectiveness

and sustainability

(2)

Recommendations

(3)

2.4.1. Program Profile

A. Padakhep: an introduction

1986. Poverty is striking Bangladesh, a country of 130 million inhabitants situated in South-East Asia. Revolted by the alarming situation he was witnessing, Iqbal Ahammed, former worker at the World Bank in Dhaka, decided to leave his office and to go to the field : he created, in a small remote village of Barisal district, in the South of the country, his organization: Padakhep Manabik Unnayan Kendra(PMUK). The initial objective of Padakhep was to find a solution to the hardship of life of the villagers, and was especially working on the field of agriculture, building awareness sessions and mobilizing the villagers to take their destiny in their own hands.

Now, twenty years have passed, and Padakhep is present in 166 locations of 53 districts, both in rural and urban areas of the country86(*). There, Padakhep is implementing various development programs and projects, within a single mission: to create self-financed, self-employed and self-empowered communities with increased capabilities by providing need based services and supports.

To do so, Padakhep follows a holistic development approach (HDA), and its interventions are centered in the following sectors: Microfinance; Agriculture; Health; Education; Street Children; Enterprise Promotion; Gender; Advocacy and Training. Its strategy is characterized by a bottom up approach, with an emphasis on beneficiaries' participation in all stages of the project. The following figure illustrates Padakhep's HDA.

Source: http://www.padakhep.org

In order to achieve its missions, Padakhep relies on its principal strength: its management. Padakhap has actually more than 1000 workers all over Bangladesh, at different executive levels. The following table gives the distribution of the actual number of staff.

Sl No.	Staff Category	Number of Staff
		Female	Male	Total
01	Policy Making Level	03	12	15
02	Mid Level Staff	15	58	73
03	Field Level Staff	356	676	1032
04	Support Staff	18	35	53
Total (2005)		392	781	1173

Source: Padakhep profile, 2005

The management structure of Padakhep is being illustrated in our next page. The first organ is the General Board, which consists of 21 members and which meets at least one time a year. Its mission is to approve the activities of the Executive Committee. Moreover, it does elect the members of the Executive Committee, which consists of 8 members: 1 president (whose role is to monitor Padakhep's activities), 6 members and 1 secretary. The role of secretary is being played by the executive director who is the executive chief of the organisation. He plans and designs the projects, prepares and develops the budget, designs the policies and implements all activities. He recruits, under approval of the Executive Committee, all types of staff. The existing management is therefore being run under the Executive Director leadership and is divided in two big divisions:

1. Program Divisions

a. Education, child development and gender division

b. Health , Population, Nutrition & Sanitation Division

c. Agriculture & Marketing Division

d. Microfinance division

2. Program Supporting Divisions

a. Human Resource and administration division

b. Finance and Accounts Division

c. Research, Planning and Program development division

d. Training Division

e. Audit Division

Apart from its staff, Padakhep relies on different partnerships in order to achieve its missions. Those partnerships are segregated into 3 categories:

1. United Nations organisations : International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UNICEF, UNDP and World Food Program (WFP)

2. International organisations: Department for International development (DFID), Asian Development Bank, Action Aid Bangladesh, CONCERN Bangladesh, CGAP/World Bank, USAID etc.

3. National organisations: Palli Karma Shahayok Foundation (PKSF)^87(*), Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Agrani Bank, Department of Non-Formal Education (DNFE), Grameen Trust, etc.

Finally, Padakhep is a member of different platforms, such as Forum for Participatory Education and Development, the Gender forum, the Credit Development Forum, etc.

Organogram of Padakhep Manabik Unnayan Kendra

* ⁸⁶ Bangladesh is divided in 64 districts, each district being divided in..... Dhaka is the capital, and...

* ⁸⁷ PKSF is what is now known as an `apex organisation', a parastatal involved in loaning funds to its partner organisations (POs) for on-lending as microcredit» (for a detailed profile see Hulme and Moore, 2005)