Education, Poverty and Finance: Empowering the Children of Microentrepreneurs with Primary and Secondary Education, College Scholarships and Loans, and Financial Services for Their Businesses
This paper highlights the role that MFIs can play in empowering clients’ children with education. It discusses how Grameen Bank (GB), Bangladesh and GB partners in various countries are empowering clients’ children through education and finance.
The paper states that there is an urgent need to define and prioritize strategies that will help achieve the goal of universal primary education. GB considers education a necessary condition for poverty reduction. Its operations in this area include:
- Centre schools;
- Grameen scholarships;
- Scholarship for education in international universities;
- Higher education loans;
- Youth entrepreneur loans;
- Grameen Shikha that promotes mass education;
- Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing.
The paper recommends that lessons learned from MFI operations in education and finance should be widely disseminated in order to develop an inclusive and responsive system of education for all. The microfinance sector as a whole can do more if MFIs support education of their clients’ children as well as children of other poor families as a part of their social development agenda.
