Page 28 - Microfinance Fieldwork Undertaken on Behalf of Hands with Hands

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Yallingup, Western Australia
Email:
viti@bearfruit.com.au
Website:
http://www.bearfruit.com.au
(b)
Sometimes community quarrel and they come to him for advice [Interesting
this is all part of the psychology behind enterprise – children gather around
while conducting this interview, what are they hearing. Then participant
called over young man going to do his veterinary training, 60,000 rupees.
Wondered if this was going to also be linked into the SNUsacc to support what
will one day be an important enterprise].
8
(a)
Yes the society treats all family better.
(b)
They are trusted for loans.
9
(a)
Yes community and society treat them better because they trust and respect
them better.
(b)
A woman came and asked her how to start a business and run a business.
Question 2.11 data contributes to the profound social change that has taken place in these
participants’ lives. For example one participant’s comments that she had not been involved in an
organisation like SNUsacc before which she expressed as, ‘
she had no responsibility in society’
.
Since her family has taken out loans ‘
you gain that responsibility’
. Discussion about these two
statements with my husband identified the possible link that once participants have been granted
a SNUsacc loan with that comes a sense of ‘responsibility’ and not just to the repayments of the
loan. A psychology lens linked to microfinance would be interesting to explore but not part of this
reports focus. Therefore, it appears from this small study that when status is achieved in a
microfinance context there is willingness to transfers those benefits to family, group, community
members and those less off.
Clearly social change is evident and the term ‘scaffolding’ used by Moss et al (2005) where you
build upon the spaces between what exists, is evident with the HwH organisational infrastructure
and their SNUsacc operations. I do believe that a larger study at this point in time would
showcase similar outcomes to what has been captured above due to the cultural context,
timeframe and cooperative business model applied.
What would be beneficial for HwH is to continue this type of fieldwork and create a longitudinal
lens for analysis and evaluation purposes. Important to that process would be the
recommendation to utilise someone like Ramchandra KC throughout the fieldwork process.
What was learnt in the 2011 fieldwork was to maximise the rich data available for analysis
purposes requires a translator who has confidence in their English language skills and the ability
to prompt further explanation where necessary. The researcher also needs to be proactive in
that prompting process once they have heard the translator’s responses, where necessary.
As mentioned earlier, during the translation phase of the Jutpani V.D.C.4., fieldwork Shila KC was
also operating in her coordinators role. During this fieldwork process I learnt that Shila KC’s
added value in the data gathering process came about during one our discussion. She showed