Microfinance for Disabled People: How is it Contributing?

Abstract

Disabled people face discrimination and marginalization across the globe. They are affected by extreme poverty and due to this; they have limited livelihood opportunities. Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) overlooked the responsibility to include disabled people into their mainstream program. Microfinance is supposed to be for poverty reduction, empowerment of poor and vulnerable people but very few examples shows that microfinance served disabled people. Some MFIs or donor funded projects piloted some experiments around the globe and found that disabled people are economically active, confident, self-employed and appear as the best clients. Disabled people constitute a good market segment for MFIs. However, locating and including disabled people in the conventional microfinance practices is also challenging. Providing credit or savings service is not enough for disabled people but MFIs could offer extended services such as financial literacy, customized training for income generation. MFIs could also recruit disability friendly staff, include disability issue in the training curriculum to change mindset of staff, develop and implement the policies for reaching more disabled people. Beyond these initiatives, MFIs might build strategic partnership with Disabled Peoples Organizations (DPOs) to get effective information about disabled people to ensure access to financial services. This article would focus on several issues of disability and poverty, forms of discrimination and obstacles that disabled people face to access microfinance, contribution of microfinance on the lives of disabled people, challenges that MFIs face for designing specific program for the financial inclusion of disabled people.

Keywords: Microfinance, Poverty, Disability, Discrimination, Contribution.

DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/4-9-118