Preparatory Workshop for a Research on Microfinance and Empowerment

This workshop seeks to establish a long term collaboration between researchers and practitioners. Such a collaboration seems to us the only way to go deeper into the understandings of microfinance mecanisms and microfinance impacts. Such a collaboration would be based on : - first, regular workshops, with two objectives : sharing experiences, practices and ideas ; defining hypothesis and basis for field studies. This first workshop could lead to a joint list of items that would be experimented in forthcoming fieldwork, combining qualitative and quantitative data. - second, field studies done by researchers from the French Institute but jointly supervised ; results would be shared and discussed through regular workshops Empowerment is the first topic proposed but other themes could be a subject for future exchange and collaboration.

With the technical support of the International Labour Organization