Innovative Approaches to Microfinance in Post-Conflict Situations : Bosnia Local Initiatives Project
Over the past five years, the World Bank has developed useful post-conflict strategies that better meet the unique needs of war-torn countries. The Local Initiatives Project (LIP) in Bosnia presents a new standard of responsive social development i...
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/03/2813111/innovative-approaches-microfinance-post-conflict-situations-bosnia-local-initiatives-project http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11389 |
| Summary: | Over the past five years, the World Bank
has developed useful post-conflict strategies that better
meet the unique needs of war-torn countries. The Local
Initiatives Project (LIP) in Bosnia presents a new standard
of responsive social development in the Bank. While it
demonstrates the need to use traditional project cycle
practices, it also brings into focus many innovative
approaches that may be considered in non-conflict settings
as well, especially when pilot projects are used
effectively. Post-conflict countries must deal with a great
number of problems in short order. But such difficult
predicaments also can yield important opportunities that
should not be overlooked. The Bosnia Local Initiatives
Project was able to cope with the problems and take
advantage of the rapidly changing economic terrain. One
advantage of the LIP was that the task manager (TM) was
based in the field. The TM was able to track changes in
attitudes and behavior of government officials and take
advantage of opportunities for adaptive learning to redesign
the project and create sustainable institutions. Because the
economic and political arenas in a post-conflict country are
fluid, having a task manager on the ground who was aware of
both the local and national situations proved very useful.
Extensive beneficiary and stakeholder involvement at design
and implementation phases enabled the project to benefit
from local leadership, experimentation, diversity, and
mutual learning. Through the training components, alliances
were also built among nongovernmental organization (NGO)
partners, so that when it came time to downsize the original
17 NGOs to 5, a constructive process ensued that focused on
the long-term success of the country's microcredit
goals versus the NGOs' short-term ambitions.
Transforming a pilot project into a national project
required intensive stakeholder involvement at both the local
and national levels. These types of coalitions for change
need time to grow, but also need to see positive results as
a way of mobilizing action for change. The use of a pilot
project to initiate and test a national project enabled the
team to work productively and quickly outside the
bureaucracy of a skeptical government until the success of
the pilot project was evident. |
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