India
From local emergency humanitarian aid to global partnership initiatives facilitating development
ACTED launched its mission in India at the beginning of 2005 with an emergency response to the tsunami. Today, Delhi hosts ACTED Regional Coordination office.
Despite India’s political stability and its international recognition as a leader in industries such as information technology, the country still ranks 128th in the UNDP Human Development Index, with more than 800 million people living on less than $2 per day. Response to already poor communities affected by disasters needs to be combined with longer-term projects to bring holistic adapted support to the development of the country.
ACTED and implements on-going early recovery projects in Supaul and Madhubani for flood-affected populations in the State of Bihar. The activities include shelter construction, water infrastructure rehabilitation, hygiene promotion, Cash For Work (CFW) activities, Income Generating activity (IGA) projects and GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping. Its operations are growing and ACTED seeks to ensure the transition between emergency and rehabilitation thanks to community-driven livelihood and development projects.
ACTED is also working to build bridges between its different Asian areas and sectors of intervention, such as the leather industry (linking India and Pakistan), microfinance and local institution capacity building.
As a regional microfinance stakeholder, ACTED has set up SAMN, the South Asian Microfinance Network, that provided capacity-building to 18 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) of five countries, with over half a million clients and an outstanding loan portfolio value of €56 million. ACTED plays therefore a coordinating role among a number of South Asian and European stakeholders and plans to deepen and broaden its partnerships with European and other stakeholders.
In the future, ACTED intends to work along three main directions: maintaining and enhancing a core Emergency Responding Capacity in-country, promoting longer-term community-driven development, and strengthening the microfinance sector. To support these initiatives, ACTED will further develop its reputation and credibility in the provision of high-quality interventions in both emergency aid and development programmes. ACTED in India is thus building on its partnerships and networks, seeking and establishing relations with new donor agencies and providing essential and innovative support to vulnerable populations, local institutions and other development actors.
Microfinance networking
Microfinance is of paramount importance for the economic development of financially disadvantaged areas, but inefficient MFIs and lack of interest from foreign investors have lessened the high potential of this field. ACTED plays a coordinating role among a number of south Asian and European stakeholders (ACCESS Development Services, RSPN, MISFA, Standard Chartered Bank, Tiaré Groupe and Oxus Development Network) in establishing the South Asian Microfinance Network (SAMN). This is one of the first initiatives of its kind, providing a regional platform that facilitates cooperation between the European financial sector and the microfinance sector in South Asia. SAMN provides tailored capacity-building to 18 MFIs in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with over half a million clients and an outstanding loan portfolio value of 56 million EUR. Experiences and knowledge are shared across international borders and the global visibility of the network is enhanced by the publication of newsletters and of a website (www.samn.eu).
