The Internal Learning System for participatory impact assessment of microfinance

01.12.2001
In spite of the rhetoric of participation, most PRAs are one-off events used in the initial design of programmes, and community participants are less involved in the running of programmes. The Internal Learning System described in this article is a monitoring system dealing with five levels of an organization, starting at the level of microfinance clients. Clients record aspects of their lives in their ILS diaries, from the construction of their houses to the incidence of domestic abuse, and are then encouraged to set priorities for goals they wish to achieve. Impact indicators relate to work and material assets, consumption, empowerment, finances and group functioning. The diaries are designed to be used by illiterate people, and this article describes how they have been enthusiastically adopted by poor women handloom operators in South India, for whom they are a symbol of their growing confidence. The diaries have been used to confirm the women's low-income status with government officials and reveal to programme managers changes in income status and in empowerment. Recording is also carried out at the group level, the cluster level, management level and funding level, and the data recorded at all levels are regularly analysed and fed into planning at the level concerned.