So, I haven’t posted for 7 months so I figure I should give an update on what I’ve been doing.
I’m still working for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a US-based non profit that evaluates anti-poverty programs (more on what I do here). I was based in the Philippines where I was working on the pilot of a project on Spillovers to Informative Advertising. Once that pilot was done, I moved to a different project where IPA is evaluating the impact of Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA’s) on rural households in Malawi and Uganda. IPA is conducting this evaluation in 4 countries: Mali, Ghana, Uganda and Malawi.
Basically, VSLA’s are community owned banks (think the Savings and Loan in “It’s a Wonderful Life”), where members meet every week and each person has to save a certain amount of money this week. Eventually, members can borrow from the group. All interest income stays within the group and is distributed to members based on how much they have saved. VSLA’s are an example of savings led microfinance that is becoming increasingly popular and IPA is working on one of the first rigorous evaluations of its impacts.
I work on just the Uganda and Malawi portions of the evaluations, so I’ve been shuttling back and forth between Uganda and Malawi. I was in Uganda for the month of September. Since then I’ve been in Malawi (with a trip back home for the holidays). On Sunday I fly to Uganda for a couple months and then at the start of May I come back to Malawi.
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