Till the time that I joined IIFM, Bhopal, for my management degree, I had never thought I would be a part of the so called "development sector". I was 21, starry eyed, wanted a flashy corporate job, with all the perks and a fat package to go with it. I appeared for CAT, and landed up at IIFM, and thus the story of my tryst with the sector begins.
Initially, it was which sector is going to pay me the highest, or which is the sector that is "in". Then the focus shifted to what is the subject I like most and am most capable of doing my best in. Microfinance for me was more of a career move rather than wanting to help poor women through providing them with access to financial services, thereby empowering them. This came in much later, after I joined my first job at an apex Microfinance agency - Friends of Women's World Banking, India.
While I still believe that market forces rule anything that is even remotely connected to finance, and that is how it should be, working in FWWB sensitized me towards issues and gave me perspectives I never had before. I am a firm believer that business, bottomlines and profits are the buzzwords and any development can be brought about only through mutual benefit, and development or prosperity cannot be brought through charity and grants, yet, I have now been through many incidents of meeting people, discussing with them their problems, sharing their practical day to day struggles, which now have made me capable of looking at things from their point of view also. Its a very humbling feeling. I will narrate a lot of those incidents in this blog.
Now, I am joining MicroSave, I hope to carry the learnings and build on them to a new workplace, to a new profile of work. Ultimately, it must lead to my career development, through developing the lives of those poor people.....which now clearly justifies my calling them our clients.......benefeciaries is a word that is long forgotten. If there is a benfeciary, its us.
Initially, it was which sector is going to pay me the highest, or which is the sector that is "in". Then the focus shifted to what is the subject I like most and am most capable of doing my best in. Microfinance for me was more of a career move rather than wanting to help poor women through providing them with access to financial services, thereby empowering them. This came in much later, after I joined my first job at an apex Microfinance agency - Friends of Women's World Banking, India.
While I still believe that market forces rule anything that is even remotely connected to finance, and that is how it should be, working in FWWB sensitized me towards issues and gave me perspectives I never had before. I am a firm believer that business, bottomlines and profits are the buzzwords and any development can be brought about only through mutual benefit, and development or prosperity cannot be brought through charity and grants, yet, I have now been through many incidents of meeting people, discussing with them their problems, sharing their practical day to day struggles, which now have made me capable of looking at things from their point of view also. Its a very humbling feeling. I will narrate a lot of those incidents in this blog.
Now, I am joining MicroSave, I hope to carry the learnings and build on them to a new workplace, to a new profile of work. Ultimately, it must lead to my career development, through developing the lives of those poor people.....which now clearly justifies my calling them our clients.......benefeciaries is a word that is long forgotten. If there is a benfeciary, its us.
1 comment:
once again.. i am welcoming you to blogosphere.. i hope this time you would be regular.. and the topic you have chosen to right.. probably even I would dare to speak/write something about this.. though not that competent but..
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