Hello dear participant:

I am Lucho Osorio. It is a real pleasure to finally meet you. I work as the International Coordinator of the Markets and Livelihoods Programme at Practical Action in the UK. I am also the focal point of the Markets and Livelihoods Working Group of the Livelihoods Network. I am really grateful to SEEP, LN and Practical Action for supporting me to co-facilitate this amazing learning initiative with Tracy Gerstle.

My main interest is to better understand how market stakeholders and other social actors transform market systems and how to facilitate their transformation in directions that increase prosperity for marginalised producers.

I am exploring complex systems theory and revisiting participation practice in the search of new ideas and insights for my work as facilitator. I am also very interested in learning and innovation processes, both within development organizations and in market systems.

If you have similar interests, I would love to share ideas with you.

I hope you enjoy this conference.

Best regards,
Lucho

Hello Fellow Market Development Pracitioners,

Lucho and I are so pleased to be hosting this initiaitve and conference for the SEEP Network and the ED Exchange.

As a practitioner of market development programs over many years, I have both implemented and witnessed programs that are leveraging the power of markets to reach thousands and even hundreds of thousands of marginalized enterprises and households in order to better their lives.

What’s striking though is that despite the interest in different approaches to market development over the years—whether you started with some of the first tools such as subsector analysis, clusters or BDS, or have entered the field more recently with approaches such as value chains and M4P—is how many implementers struggle to put good market assessments into practice and achieve impacts and scale in their initiatives.

As you will see from the literature review—more and more tools and other resources are coming online to assist in facilitation—so then the question becomes what can be do to make these approaches more accessible to a wider audience and where are there still gaps?

I have spent the last couple of years working with different international organizations to build their capacity in adopting and scaling these approaches including CHF International and Mercy Corps.

So I am interested in this opportunity to interact with a wider audience of practitioners and ask—how can we move forward our collective efforts to take these approaches to a wider audience? What tools and resources do you find most effective in your work? Where do you struggle or want to do more? What types of expertise and partnerships do international non-profit organizations and others operating in their field require to become effective facilitators.

I look forward to the discussion!

Regards,
Tracy Gerstle

Hi,

I am a Pakistani Development Professional, currently working for a Matching Grant Fund promoting use of BDS by Agribusiness Enterprises.

We also have a specific component, which promotes rural micro enterprises. These rural enterprises are basically cooperative (10 farmers each), who start a business.

We have been surprised by the increased revenues, which these enterprises can achieve with just a little support. e.g. One Cooperative, sold its products collectively in a metropolitan city and increased its revenues by 3 Million Rs (39,000 US$). Other enterprises increased their revenues by about 250% through using a appropriate technology based solar dehydrator.

I am looking for similar experiences. Simple initiatives, which can have a major impact.

Hi all,

Just thought to introduce my self. I am working in Concern Worldwide Pakistan Programme in one of their provincial offices.

We are experimenting with Enterprise Development in our urban poverty programme at Quetta… establishing CCBs (sort of community unit), wealth ranking for most poor, linking them with vocational opportunities, business trainings, development of feasibilities, provision of tool kit from a revolving fund, provision of matching grant and finally linking the newly established micro enterprises with MFIs or SMEDA (the authority having opportunities for micro enterprises through one of their programmes).

We are actually just half way (up til business training) as this started in Feb 08. We are also planning to open up a display centre in main market area of Quetta to attract visitors from capital and other larger cities of Pakistan for promotion of hand made embroidery, carpet and various other products having Afghani, Balochi, Pushto and other cultural origins.

I am really hoping to learn a lot from this online conference (though i may not be able to participate much due to increased personnel commitments on time of our religious celebrations of Eid).

Hope to interact with you all.

Best Regards.

Syed Hasan Rizvi
Programme Officer
Concern Worldwide Pakistan – Balochistan
Cell: +92 (0) 3018380286

Hi All,

I am Kirti, involved in marketing for creating sustainable livelihoods for poor for last 13 years. My organization MART is a leading rural marketing consulting agency and have been supporting Government and many bilateral agencies.

As a person from marketing discipline and a strong believer of market led approach I am very keen to follow this discussion. I strongly believe this would be a great platform for knowing international experience.

Best regards

Hi Tracy and Lucho, hi All :-) nice to meet you

I am originally Swedish geographer but now Denmark-resident consultant. I have followed this field for some time, having participating in the BDS Seminar. I wonder what can be done to enable regions to initiate and develop own value chains starting with near-market innovation, e.g. in distribution, logistics, channels, branding.

Now with a Danish government program for user-centered innovation, a proposal of mine is to have a versatile network of creatives work with near-user retail/distribution staff under IPR expertise guidance. To get retail/distribution on board is the prime challenge. Still, if among the initiators, innovative outcome could be owned by a developing region from the onset.

Another aspect is how to involve regional investors, for efficient investor-entrepreneur partnerships. I’m interested in any feedback, interest and cooperation in this area.

Best regards, Sören Floderus
Owner, Wider IP
sf@widerip.com
Skype: floderuss; MSN, Gtalk: widerip@live.com, widerip@gmail.com
Bagerstræde 9
DK-1617 Copenhagen V, Denmark
work: 45-33222581
mobile: 45-41277185

I am a development worker and a reformer. Am happy to be part of this conference.

Am here to learn from you all and also contribute to seeing how we can make a change once again, You all welcome.

Thanks

Inalegwu Frank Uji

My name is Jessan Catre and recently joined the Oxfam Joint Mindanao Programme here in the Philippines. Previous to this, I was an Agroenterprise Team Leader with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in the Philippines for almost five years. In my work with CRS, we developed a small farms collective marketing approach based on CIAT's Rural Agroenterprise Development approach.

Here's is the link where the said book can be viewed and downloaded:

http://www.pinoyme.com/b2b/the-clustering-approach-to-agroenterprise-dev...

One of the major stragies in the Oxfam programme where I'm is value chain development in the context of sustainable livelihood.

I joined this forum after being led here by Mr. Rupert Best.

I hope to learn and share in this forum.

Cheers to all!

Jessan =)

My name is George Oboli, I am the Managing Partner of Georeve Communications, an organization of Social Entrepreneurs that specializes in providing management services for NGO’s/charity organizations in Nigeria. Currently, we manage six charity organizations that provide different support services ranging from youth entrepreneurship, women empowerment, rehabilitation, peace and good governance. I am pleased to be part of this.

Hello.
My name is Mai Rattanavong and I am a program assistant for the WORTH Women’s Empowerment Program at Pact. We’re currently testing a fee-for-service model for our literacy- and savings-led microfinance program through social franchising to support women entrepreneurship and market-led program scale up. I look forward to learning from you all.

Hi,

My name is Deepak D. Khadka. I work at Practical Action Nepal office as the Markets and Livelihoods Programme team leader. It is a real pleasure to participate in this initiative and this is my first time.

In Nepal, we are currently working on two projects within our programme. The first one is focused on minimizing the impact of conflict through an integrated peace building and livelihood promotion project called SABAL. This project is aimed at improving the livelihoods of conflict affected communities in far western Nepal and is being funded by EC. The other theme is focused on improving the livelihoods of small holder dairy farmers in Central and Western Nepal. This is currently under project development phase and we are interested in engaging with a wide variety of public and private service providers to increase the access to critical and appropriate inputs and services for small holder dairy farmers. I look forward to sharing my insights and view and learning more from the group.

Thanks

DDK

Hi everybody !

I am George Staicu, a microfinance and banking consultant from Romania , and I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to SEEP Network for organizing this really interesting and very informative online conference “Understanding and Accessing Social Investment – Savings-Led methodologies” , that gave to all the participants the chance to share and exchange ideas and thoughts on critically important areas and issues related to the worldwide economic development .

It was a real priviledge for me to attend this valuable conference.

As for my self I am trying to do my best in to contribute to the economic development of poor and less developed countries / regions. In this respect I am offering know-how and practical managerial skills and experience in the following main areas: banking, micro – banking, microfinance, community development, rural finance, agricultural lending, e-banking, bank cards; risk management; stock-exchange organization & regulation, stock-exchange investments, management of mutual and pension funds; Micro & SMEs management; Credit bureaus ; MFI donor fundraising and reporting, bank regulation and supervision, public finance, local public finance & administration, policy & procedures designing and implementation; European Union legal framework; project management; training seminars presentation; consulting projects funded by EU Phare/Europe Aid, World Bank, French Development Agency, UK DFID (Know-How Fund), other international institutions and NGOs, etc.

My specific expertise covers areas such as:
• institutional building of financial institutions (banks & MFIs) in less developed, post-conflict, developing or transition countries/ regions, covering the following areas:
 corporate governance;
 business strategy, planning & budgeting;
 micro & SME lending;
 human resource management
 reporting for internal and regulatory/donor/investor compliance purposes;
 asset & liability management;
 performance analysis & management;
 branch management & bank branch network performance management/monitoring;
 internal & external audits;
 risk management [ (Basel II Accord – pillars 1, 2 and 3) credit risk, market risk, operational risk as well as strategy risk, compliance risk, technological risk, money laundering risk];
 advanced knowledge of GAAP, IFRS/IAS, CGAP microfinance principles, EU MiFID, US Sarbanes-Oxley, US FFIEC Uniform Bank Performance Report, US FFIEC Advanced Capital Adequacy Framework Regulatory Reporting Requirements, US FFIEC Market Risk Framework Regulatory Reporting Requirements, and ISDA Credit Support Annex regulations;
 knowledge of Basel II Accord risk management compliant software packages produced by Cognos, Business Objects, Sungard, SAS, SAP Algorithmics, Information Builders, Oracle, IBM etc;
 Knowledge of the Committee Draft (issued in June 2007)of ISO 31000 “Risk management — Guidelines on principles and implementation of risk management”;
 selection and implementation of banking software for banks and integrated software ( accounting, loan tracking, payroll, etc.) for MFIs;
 knowledge of new technologies for bank management (CPM, BI, BPM, EWRM, EAI, CRM, ERP, SCM, Six Sigma, Hoshin Kanri, etc. developed by Cognos, SAS, Oracle/Siebel, SAP, Algorithmics, Business Object, Sungard, Hyperion etc) for regulatory and management reporting (including balance scorecards & dashboards), risk management, asset & liability management, planning, budgeting, forecasting, performance, branch, product& customer profitability and total quality management;
 knowledge of the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science)
 Fund Transfer Pricing & Activity Based Costing methods for loans and savings costing and profitability analysis as well as for branch network performance and organizational analysis, management & restructuring;
 drafting technical requirements pertaining to ToR / RFP for the procurement of modern bank management software applications (CPM, BI, EWRM, EAI, CRM, ERP, etc);
 financial & managerial accounting; corporate finance; financial modeling & analysis;
 lending and savings products and services; bank cards;
 private banking & asset management; structured products (financial derivatives) ;
 correspondent banking, cash management;
 loan cash flow planning;
 internal control systems;
 internal audit (including IT audit also);
 credit analysis; project financing; trade financing;
 marketing management; customer relationship/profitability management; knowledge of Dynamic Digital Signage software (Info Channel by Scala).
 human resources management; staff incentive schemes (including loan officers bonus schemes);
 change management;
 administration management;
 micro-banking and microfinance products and services;
 microfinance management; microfinance strategic planning; microfinance annual budgeting & operational planning; microfinance assets & liability management; microfinance financial analysis; microfinance internal & external audits;
 good knowledge of MFI accounting, loan tracking, MIS and integrated software: Orbit, Temenos Emerge, TMS/Microfitsolution, SIEM 7.13, FAO/GTZ Microbanker, Loan Performer 7.04, Kredits LTS 5.12, Bankers Realm MFO, Cubis 8, etc.
 very good knowledge of MFI software for developing a business plan and financial projections – Microfin 4.0
 microfinance impact studies; microfinance donor fundraising and reporting microfinance administration management;
 Member of the CGAP – Microfinance Gateway consultants pool (http://www.microfinancegateway.org/p/site/m//template.rc/1.9.31393 )
My full CV can be found here: CGAP – Microfinance Gateway consultants pool (http://www.microfinancegateway.org/p/site/m//template.rc/1.9.31393 )