Wednesday 1 August 2012

ACUMEN AND DELL FOUNDATION VISIT SPARC, AUGUST 2012

Sid Tata and his colleague Karuna Jain met Sheela Vinod and David at Khetwadi to further discuss the development of a strategy to provide loans to slum dwellers who were members of NSDF and Mahila Milan for incremental upgrading of their homes. They brought with them Rahil Rangwala from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to meet with SPARC as well. Most of the time went in acquainting each other about the organizations since Dell Foundation and SPARC were meeting each other the firs time.


The project:
The SPARC NSDF Mahila Milan and SSNS know that the largest number of households of the poor in cities build their own homes, and they build it bit by bit. This inquiry of SPARC is to explore ways to produce a loan and a large scale over time to households to upgrade their homes incre- mentally, using the Mahila Milan groups to administer and manage the loans.
Based on the modest experience so far the households can borrow up to 20,000 and repay it in 10-15 months. The loans are reviewed by the federation in the city which send these recommen- dations to SSNS. The present explorations are to examine the issues to systematize and scale up these loans and to develop the financial model to make them sustainable.
Elements to do with policy advocacy, with design and materials issues will be taken parallel once this demonstrates its feasibility.

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