SCMS Faculty And Students Work To Help Micro Entrepreneurs Via DelPHE Project

Online, December 27, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Training programmes in microfinance for micro entrepreneurs were recently conducted by SCMS faculty and students as part of the activities under the DelPHE (Development Projects in Higher Education) project awarded to the school earlier this year.

Dr. Arun Thankom of the University of Lancashire and chairman of the steering committee for the DelPHE project said the project has four overall goals.

"The overall objectives of the project are: to understand the key issues in microfinance through various models; to understand the risk-coping mechanisms adopted by the women entrepreneurs in micro enterprise initiatives; an assessment of policy directions, responses and implications of the state/nation and other stakeholders towards the risk-coping mechanism of women, and to understand the existing behaviour and attitudes of operation in each country and benchmark with known international best practices," he said.

Dr. Thankom said it is hoped the project "will help to devise training modules on entrepreneurial development. It will also help to identify various sustainable profit-oriented business opportunities for increasing the scope of employment."

And he pointed out: "The success of the project will push SCMS-Cochin into the higher orbit of business institutions within the country and at the global level with a knowledge generation perspective."

SCMS won out over international competition to receive the project awarded by the United Kingdom's Department of International Development.

Titled Microfinance, Gender and Poverty: A multi-country study on research and training, it is a joint effort involving SCMS-Cochin; the Lancashire Business School, UK; the Institute of Finance Management (IFM), Tanzania and Yaalex Investment Limited (YLX), Ghana.

Being the lead partner, SCMS-Cochin "will develop an appropriate plan of action within the partner institutions, such as administering a three-year panel data instrument with 30 women per year and undertake focused group discussions eliciting views on women entrepreneurs' risk-coping mechanisms," said Dr. Thankom.

"SCMS-Cochin will organize year-end conferences and training for both women and practitioners," he said, adding the school "will share experiences on the project, particularly, on the opportunities, threats, challenges and successes of instituting an independent learning scheme to augment operations of microfinance practitioners."