SEDPI’s President and CEO, Mr. Mariel Vincent Rapisura, was one of the speakers in a workshop for the fifth Global Microcredit Summit 2011. This year’s summit was held on November 14 to 17 in Valladolid, Spain. It focused on sharing best practices and reviewing the progress of efforts to attain the goals of the Microcredit Summit Campaign.
In the summit’s workshop titled “Remittances and Microfinance: Using Remittances for Productive Investments that Contribute to Sustainable Community Development”, Mr. Rapisura presented relevant SEDPI research results on remittances and microfinance. He shared SEDPI’s strategies geared towards improving the current situation of migrants and microfinance clients.
SEDPI conducts financial literacy to migrants. To date, it has conducted 45 financial literacy trainings to 1,678 migrants in 14 countries worldwide. Through its financing arm, SEDPI Capital Credit, Inc. (SCCI), it mobilizes investments from migrants. SCCI mobilized USD 300,000 from migrants. These migrant investments are then invested to local MFIs. SCCI has provided USD 2.5 million wholesale loans to 16 MFIs reaching 131,219 households in the Philippines. Most of these MFIs have operations in the rural areas. To protect migrant investments, SEDPI strengthens MFIs through extending capacity building and continuous monitoring and mentoring. SEDPI also conducts financial literacy to family members of remittance senders. A total of 575 remittance receivers in the Philippines were already trained. SEDPI also developed a comic book for remittance receivers and conducted training of trainers (TOT) to enable staff of MFIs to deliver the trainings to remittance receivers.
Through its programs and services, SEDPI is able to share in the attainment of Microcredit Summit Campaign’s goals for 2015. These goals are to 1) ensure that 175 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families, are receiving credit for self-employment and other financial and business services and 2) ensure that 100 million families rise above the USD 1.25 a day poverty threshold. Given the current demographics and pressing needs of both migrants and MFI clients, SEDPI is all the more passionate in improving the delivery of its services for the migrants, MFIs and its clients, and remittance receivers.