Dialogue with the Training Service Providers
on Building Capacity of the MFIs

To minimize the widening skill gap, Institute of Microfinance (InM), Bangladesh has planned to provide high quality training support to the MFIs for their sustainable development and pledges to disseminate this training service through the leading training providers. InM intends to essentially act as a facilitator for building capacity of microfinance institutions jointly with the training service providers. To begin with an integrated training program, InM organized a workshop titled “Dialogue with the Training Service Providers on Building Capacity of the MFIs” on July 17, 2008 at the PKSF auditorium. The dialogue with the existing training service providers in the microfinance industry and academicians was set to provide policy recommendation and action plan to begin with an excellent training program. This report presents an excerpt of the dialogue for designing further action plan. The dialogue was an interactive session with critical analysis of the issue.

InM organized the dialogue with four basic objectives:

The dialogue started with a presentation by Professor M A Baqui Khalily, Executive Director, InM on the objectives and the role of InM in initiating and delivering high quality training. In the dialogue there were 50 participants from around 45 institutions. The participants in the dialogue pointed out the problems they are facing due to unavailability of standardized training programs. Among the major obstacles they mentioned were the lack of skilled manpower, lack of refreshers’ training, no link between trainers’ career and their performance, lack of proper teaching method, unavailability dynamic course design and lack of standard training modules. After and in-depth discussion InM and the participants consented on some major issues such as creating certified trainers’ pool, developing uniform training materials, ensuring quality of training programs, sharing training cost, introducing academic programs on microfinance and arranging training courses based on dynamic needs. Some long term and short term strategies were identified to implement the consensus decisions.

The dialogue ended with the expectation that all these actions will be initiated and performed by the Institute of Microfinance (InM). Based on the mentioned consensus and expected role of InM, InM will formulate further action plan and policy to arrange internationally acclaimed and universally accepted training programs. 

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