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1. INTRODUCTION The study was taken up so that I can develop comprehensive understanding of the organization and hence a better case can be prepared with the application of the learnings from the class room segments. The study was conducted in the month of July, 2004 as part of OTS segment arranged by IRMA. 1.1. OBJECTIVES: Several significant changes in the operating environment of APMAS are being taking place, which have impacted the strategy of APMAS from time to time. It has recently completed 3 years of its operations as a state level technical support apex body to the SHPIs, SHG federations and other interested. It has generated considerable interest among the various stakeholders in the mF sector with its work, who wants know the success of the organization as a social enterprise. This case analysis was taken up to cover major milestones or road blocks which contributed for the success or failure of the organization since the incubation period. 1.2. METHODOLOGY: The methodology includes,  Perusal of documents including progress reports, business development plan, papers, review reports and study reports of APMAS such as feasibility report, draft proposal on APMAS written by Orlanda Ruthven.  Structured discussion mode interviews with the Chairman and other selected members of the board representing various stakeholders at senior level such as CEO of Velugu, CGM of Andhra Bank (Priority wing) etc.  Formal interviews with the staff of APMAS who are serving since last 3 years of its operations to have more grasp of most of things during these periods.  Discussions with key senior functionaries of the State Government, banks at the field level representing the users of APMAS services.  Discussions with grass root level functionaries such as MBKs, CCs etc to know about the work of APMAS and their feedback  Visit to villages under the Ananthapur and Vijayawada regional offices of APMAS, discussions with self help groups and federations.

 Participating in board meetings, core group meetings and whole organizational meeting during the retreat to know more about the issues of concern and understand the organization at close quarters. For the purpose of writing the case I divided the organization mainly into four stages applying organizational life cycle frame work. Incubation stage: This is the phase where the seeds for setting up of an apex body were formed. The total period of the phase of 3 years from 1998-2001.There was no organization existing at this phase. This phase was mainly characterized by two studies conducted by key stake holders in the up coming organization. Entrepreneurial Stage: This is stage in the formative phase of the organization. The initial six months after the organization was termed as formation stage. This stage is characterized by the high and ambitious goals that the organization set for itself to achieve with great amount of creativity. The work of the organization hasn’t achieved the credibility on its own. Sometimes this stage also exhibits the fears of organizational survivability. This stage is also characterized by the pampering and nurturing of the organization by key stakeholders and board members etc. Collective Stage: This is a stage in early growth phase of the organization where APMAS has started expanding rapidly after establishing its credibility among the clients. This stage is characterized by high commitment of staff and organizational efforts towards structuring the information systems by devising systems, processes etc. It also characterized by that in this stage APMAS has purely focused on scaling up of its activities and looking for new partnerships and ventures so that it can enjoy the diversified funding. The organization existed in this stage for nearly a year and half Formalization & Control Stage: This is a stage in the mid growth phase which is mainly the last one year of its operation. Here the organizations’ main focus is on building stable structures emphasis on efficiency and formalization of rules demystification of development

terms and bringing more role clarity. The organization went into this stage with great pace but it doesn’t have the required capacities to survive as it lacks the professional systems and other problems such as dynamic government policies. 2. INCUBATION STAGE: It was during the year 1998, the then Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh announced to setup a Rs. 1000 Cr bank on the lines of FWWB to increase the credit availability to the SHG groups, called APWF. The move was resented by various key stakeholders from many quarters, including few government functionaries, as providing credit is not the issue, but increasing the capacities of the women SHGs and federations to manage their resources, so that they can access the credit themselves from traditional financial institutions should be focused. Upon which government approached major players in the movement to study the feasibility of setting up of a state level apex body which will address the capacity building requirements of the SHG groups at village level and federations at mandal level. During that point of time DFID is planning to fund CARE, which is embarking on starting CASHE project in AP. DFID evinced interest in the project initiated by the GoAP and others. It came forward to fund the study to be commissioned by GoAP under BASIX, Vikasa Darshini & CARE. From all these developments it can be seen that there is collective will among all the key stake holders including the GoAP to start state level apex autonomous institute to provide technical assistance in capacity building activities . The study confirmed that there is much demand for credit and hence the capacity building services as there are only 20% of the total groups in the state under grade ‘A’, who have the bank linkages for getting credit and also have the SHG knowledge such as book keeping and financial management etc. Other interesting finding of the study was that the promoters have no or least capacities in improving the quality of these SHGs. So it was suggested to setup an organization possessing all the expertise and provides technical assistance to the promoters by playing ‘facilitator’ role. Initially it was thought to register as trust forming the GoAP, NABARD, other lead banks in AP such as Andhra Bank, SBH etc., NGOs, funding body, few wholesale mF institutions like BASIX, Vikasa Darshini and few MACS president i.e. federation CEOs as trustees. The latter were included so that the institution has apt representation of the ultimate beneficiary as in due to course it was designed to pass over the institution to these women to manage it at state level. It was proposed that the thus formed apex institutions will provide guarantee to

the banks for the credit extended by them to the groups. But this proposal was scrapped as it may pose financial sustainability of the organization. The organizations thus formed will purely look after the building of capacities of the groups and encourages others to perform financial functions on decentralized basis. To put it through definition, the purpose of the organization is “To enhance the ability of SMFIs to provide responsive services to its members on a sustainable basis in AP.” Meanwhile the future constituents including the would be CEO, i.e. the state director of CARE (I) , of the organization took up a study to assess the quantum of capacity building requirements in three districts from three different geographic regions of the state to prepare business plans and future strategies. APMAS was set up with a plan to provide services to clients by charging fee which constitutes a third of the total cost incurred in the project per annum .The rest of costs will be pooled up from a donor agency. The stake holders didn’t find problems in identifying the main donor in the form of DFID as it was already funding the CASHE project taken up by CARE in the state to promote the SHG formation. DFID has agreed to release an amount of 1.85 million pounds for a project period of 5 years through CASHE. This assured funding by a donor is one of the factors of strength of the organization in its progress towards accomplishing its mission. It can be said that the organization was born with a golden spoon. Many people even now feels that the idea and establishment of an apex body to take up the unique work of capacity building had given the advantage to the organization as no other player were operating at state level for this purpose. This is also viewed as one of principle factors of success of the organization. APMAS has chosen through various consultations with the key stakeholders, the quality assessment, quality enhancement, research and informed advocacy as its main functions to address the capacity building needs of the groups/federations. The former two functional areas were proposed to work out by forming agents known as Quality Assessment Agents (QAA) and Capacity Building Agents (CBA). It also wants to take up these activities through collaborations with many other players who already had good presence in the sector such as NABARD, M-CRIL etc. The energies and support of the many key stakeholders helped the organization in preparing better mission document and policy environment. This is the cornerstone for the organization to grow in stature and ultimately a success factor.

3. ENTREPRENEURIAL STAGE: It has started with 15 members’ staff including a CEO who was formerly the state director of CARE (India) having 12 years of experience in development sector. The core staff was drawn from various NGOs & mF institutions that are having good amount of experience in working at policy/implementation levels in the state. The other functional and supporting staff was drawn from open job market without following the stringent recruitment procedures. Primitive personnel policies were developed in due course. During this period the organization faced many downs than ups. The organization has failed in communicating clearly with most of the clients on all 5 Ws and an H on its existence. There was no or limited trust among the clients on the service offered by it. No client was forthcoming to formalize its relationship with APMAS, through written MoUs, though many of them are seeking the services of APMAS because lack of credibility. There are exceptions such as ASP, who bestowed great faith in the budding organization to assess its 70 MACS/federations and provide CB services accordingly. Even the DFID who assured that the funding will be smooth and proper created problems in releasing the same in time, because of the board structure i.e. the conflict interests between the board members as they are from the same mF background and the lack of clarity about the roles of to be formed advisory committee and membership of management committee etc. This delay in releasing of funds has resulted in rough take off of the organization, but it acted as a blessing in disguise for the organization as it has started looking at few other government promoters of SHGs such as APRLP and WE&SE to provide CB services. It started working with the government institutions at close quarters in the name of providing services, despite the lack of formal MoUs with those government entities. These moves has projected an image that the organization is a part of government to boost the SHG movement in the state and confused most of the NGO clients except for the few who understood it in entirety of existence. Even now, to an extent, APMAS failed in quelling the notion that it is not unfriendly towards NGOs because of these developments. The existence of lack of clarity about the organization role among the clients especially the government promoters has also resulted in happening of other problems such as ‘misutilization’ of staff at the district level. This staff was used for performing the regular work of promoting groups and other SHG related activities that were to be performed by the

government functionaries except the intended work of improving the qualities of the existing groups. These developments are can also be attributed to the feel among the DRDA staff that the APMAS is an extended body of the government and it existence is to provide technical support to them in their regular work of promotion of groups, a target based number crunching routine exercise. The field staff was never allowed freedom of work hence they could do little in promotion of quality of the SHGs/federations.

Meanwhile as the organization is facing these unwarranted and unpleasant situations, the board acted supportively and provided continuous encouragement. BASIX, a principle member of the board provided APMAS with timely interest free loan to setup the office and other infrastructure. The board members used to lend their name personally to bring the business for the organization, especially the former executive chairman of NABARD and presently the part time chairman of APMAS board Mr. P Kotaiah. Under his guidance the board used to discuss regularly on issues of operations of the organization. The board was instrumental in success of organization in obtaining the prior permission from FCRA to receive foreign funds as donations. There were few QA and QE products such as CRI and in house developed and not yet refined quality assessment tool called GRADES (Version 1) and few in house developed training modules respectively, to offer as it was in the process of developing the few more advanced products in collaboration with M-CRIL and PRIA respectively. It aptly focused on the research and informed advocacy function as there are minimum products in its armory to offer as service. It has started disseminating the findings of the research studies through various district level workshops involving clients and stakeholders with supported data to corroborate these findings. There are only few takers of these findings as the advocating body i.e. APMAS lack the organizational credibility and recognition. Considering these happenings the organization has started publishing the findings of the studies in their monthly news letter, ‘Mahila Sadhikaratha’ though the latter was meant for publishing the technical content on SHGs. Along with the staff of the clients, the field staff of APMAS started playing major role in establishing support structures such as animators, book keepers, as part of its quality assurance mechanism. It also started helping the government promoters in establishing the

mandal coordinator and DRP systems as per the requirements and strategies of the respective districts. Despite having few important strength factors such as reputed and credible board, assured funding for next five years and active government in promoting SHGs, the organization failed in achieving its credibility and individuality. The acceptance for their work among the clients was taken with a pinch of salt especially the bankers involved in SHG-Bank linkage programme. All the while APMAS played an operational role i.e. ‘doer’ against to its conceived implementation role i.e. ‘facilitator’. 4. COLLECTIVE STAGE: The organization as a whole did actually work harder during these times. It has started expanding it activities further by categorizing the districts as intensive where they will have a newly devised regional structure and extensive, where these districts will be provided with services from these intensive districts. The regional office will have a regional manager who supervises the whole region and will be supported by capacity building officer and programme support staff. The rationale for its fast expansion was that SERP, the implementing body of the APRPRP; popularly known as ‘VELUGU’ the light, a state government initiated project with the World Bank funds, to promote the SHGs formation across all districts of the AP is fast expanding. Though there were no formal MoUs with this body APMAS was asked to provide institution building and capacity building services to the increasing number of their groups. APMAS also wanted to work with this body as it will have wider reach and could be a potential client as it will generate much revenue. Its expansion if has not been matched by APMAS may result in marginalizing the latter as a regional player and could be detrimental to its existence as the former will swamp it. The challenge was in providing quality service with the limited staff capacities the organization having. The organization increased its staff strength to 23 and the regional as well head office staff stretched themselves to the maximum to match the ever growing demands of this giant client. It shifted its head office to a leased and spacious three storied building at a posh locality in the state capital. The head office was equipped with required furniture, equipment, voice, and LAN connectivity. The expansion of the organization can be further justified with the developments such as order of government to SLBC to increase the SHGs lending by Rs. 500

crore on populist mandate and increasing demand from existing clients APRLP and DRDA to provide the institution building services. As a strategy, the organization got away with the idea of providing QA and QE services through QAAs and CBAs as it is developing the capacitates of the staff of the promoters to take these services further. To increase the outreach it also started planning to go for affiliate organizations as franchises in providing the QA and QE services. As part of QA, APMAS has successfully developed and piloted the early version of GRADES tool to assess the qualities of SHG federations in collaboration with M-CRIL, New Delhi .It has also started developing few Self Assessment Tools for the assessing the qualities of federations depending on the age of the federations. It was able to develop the customized quality assessment service and as well initiated state level and district level workshops in collaboration with the NABARD to disseminate the latest development on QA issues. A part of QE, it started offering the services through ToT mode with the training modules developed in collaboration with PRIA. It has also taken up the much needed follow-up actions by introducing the monitoring and review processes of these trained staff. With its work it was able to generate interest among few well known training institutions such as NIRD and APARD in the state capital, have started requesting APMAS to provide few insights on issues of QE of the groups. It has started flagship training programme called ‘National Immersion Programme’ which runs for six days, where the participants were imparted the trainings on mF concepts and theories in addition to providing the relevant field exposure. As part of R&A ,APMAS has increased number of research studies .It has also started networking with various institutions to develop a strategies for Behavioural Change Communications to measure the impact of empowerment among women by using different participatory and mass media tools. As part of advocacy it started endorsing to recognize CBOs as vehicles of direct people’s participation in development programs as involving these CBOs in all government aid programs will ensure the build-up of local ownership over the development processes and generate local resources which are necessary for sustainability. It also advocating that poverty reduction being a complex issue, no government or NGO can work single-handedly in dealing with it and hope to make a tangible difference. Significant impact can be brought only when different organizations having different strengths and capabilities can constantly bring innovative poverty reduction strategies and convergence mechanisms.

As it is working through, the clients have started taking serious note of APMAS and believing it as an organization having few deliverable potentialities to strengthen the mF sector in the state. Perceiving these changes of approaches by clients, APMAS initiated the process of formalizing the written MoUs with AP Govt. (WE&SE, APRLP), SIDBI, NABARD, PRIA, and M-CRIL to much of its success. By doing so it was able to overcome the existing bureaucratic hurdles such as delays in payments for the services provided by the organization etc and started enjoying their backup. With the credibility established, APMAS was able to generate business on its own, though board still helps a lot in the same. Organization was subjected lot of unplanned work by the clients and it also reacted positively to these works because it was overambitious and restless because of newly acquired goodwill much to the worries of the staff. To ensure effective functioning of the organization it has started developing internal capacities such as well defined, simple and practiceable systems, processes and staff to match the expansion rate to bring sustainability and manageability of these expansion activities. Being an organization promoting quality in the SHG groups, it also ensured that systems reflect quality. Keeping this quality in conscious it spent considerable time in developing, understanding and practicing these simple systems. Even now the organization still has to come to terms while recruiting competent staff as there was shortage in the current job market. The staff commitment and visionary CEO helped the organization in removing the acceptance problems among the clients except the bankers who were still unable to subscribe to the kind of work APMAS was performing. The organization’s advocating the concept of public–private governance for brining over all development has found many takers and also its success in influencing the government in approving new amended MACS act based on its

recommendations has considerably

increased its image as a potential organization to reckon with in the state. It has started evolving constantly as it instilled the concept of a ‘learning organization’ deep within which is open to any kind of criticism and suggestions. Perhaps this attitude of the organization has helped the organization to reach to its current status. The role of the organization started transforming to ‘facilitator’ and process builder from the ‘doer’ role being played now. It has started playing sub-roles such as lobbying, mentoring, handholding, visionary and convergence as part of the larger role i.e. ‘facilitator’. NGOs are increasingly approaching the APMAS to lobby on behalf of them as their work at many places was overlapped with the government work at many places in the state. These NGOs

want APMAS to guide the government when it is toying with any idea, proposal which can vitiate the existing atmosphere. They also want that APMAS should mentor their staff while imparting the nuances of micro finance. Newer NGOs such as YIP, GRAM have joined the list of NGO clients of the organization. They want to benefit from the R&A and documentation expertise that APMAS possessing. The interest among the key stakeholders on the organization was growing as it can be seen from the increased demand for its services. The organization was sought as a member in several Working Groups that were constituted by the GoAP such as State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) etc. Government of Andhra Pradesh, particularly the World Bank funded Velugu project increased its consultations with APMAS to provide valuable advice on all issues related to institution building and microfinance. Velugu wants APMAS to be a thinktank and visionary while providing the services to it, which APMAS has started playing, though may not be matching to the expectations of the seekers. It was requested to be a member of the several advisory groups of NGOs like ASP, YIP etc. APMAS took up the much challenging ‘convergence’ activity as part of its social responsibility, to bring both types of promoters i.e. the NGOs and government to the same platform so that operational difficulties between them can be removed. The NGOs and Government consider APMAS as a credible agency to promote convergence and cooperation to enhance SHG quality as it started facilitating several meetings and workshops between them involving almost as many as 500 NGOs. The clients see this activity taken up the organization is its strength along with its monopoly activity i.e. the QA and caused much to its survival.

It got recognition as a “must to visit” organization in AP to learn about the SHG movement as it has started maintaining a large resource centre to be a ‘one stop shop’. All the key stakeholders including the Bankers, Government and NGOs started valuing the research findings of APMAS. It was seen as an organization that consistently works for quality at all levels. It has successfully undergone auditing by the reputed KPMG, who could not raise any major observation on it functioning and accountability.

5. FORMALIZATION AND CONTROL STAGE:

Recognizing the quality consciousness and achievements of APMAS, quite a few international and national donors, micro finance practitioners and institutions have started showing interests in collaborations with APMAS. Having recognised the need for livelihood enhancement of the SHGs as part of capacity building activity the organization has collaborated with Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) as latter’s outreach partner under the SCALE project funded by the EC. Ford Foundation came forward to provide 40,000 British pounds per annum to APMAS for its staff development initiatives for a three year period. It has also started collaborations with ILO-GTZ for micro insurance capacity building project and with EDA rural systems for USAID, CRS, GTZ and CARE to conduct a study on “Optimising SHGs”. The organization has positioned itself as an organization that can develop 15-20 organizations (NGOs and others including SMELC of UNDP) to work as resource organizations for capacity building and quality assessment of SHG Federations. These local organizations that have the potential to develop into resource organizations have stopped viewing APMAS as a competitor as they are being provided with technical and other services by it.

APMAS has bringing much needed professionalism in its work and was able to bring forth more products with good content under its flagship quality assessment and enhancement programmes. A revised GRADES tool, version 2, was developed to assess the SHG federations. It has also successfully developed and field tested the “CooPRATE” tool to assess the thrift and credit cooperatives in collaboration with CDF, AP to increase the organization avenues of revenue. To manage the QA database it has developed a rating engine which was successfully field tested. It has intensified the identification operations of individual AQAAs as part of its ‘outreach project’ to be managed by APMAS and it also stated developing the organizational affiliates as partners to provide decentralized QE services to meet the growing demands. The standardization and fine tuning of the training modules was given more focus as quality of the teaching material is paramount to cater to the increasing demands from the growing clients. It has currently started focusing on development, packaging and marketing of these QE and QA products. Research and Advocacy unit has started increasing its regularity by conducting three significant studies, on the status of SHG-Bank linkage, on the causes for default in SHGs and

on competition in micro Finance, which were commissioned by CGAP. All three studies are becoming the initiators for future research and advocacy strategies. It started disseminating the findings of these studies through state and district level workshops for which there was a considerable positive response from all quarters. The organization started focusing on making the existing internal systems more professional to monitor, control, report and disseminate information, not only because it is a state level apex body but also of the reason it is growing at much fast rate. Multi-dimensional computerized accounting package VOLAC and other internal monitoring systems suggested by CARE are being used in this regard. Internal monitoring process was further improved with the introduction of MIS which in near future will be updated in real time through web based technologies. It has also developed few process monitoring mechanisms to enhance efficiency and increase accountability of the staff. The new age communication equipments such as cell phones and others also made the process of monitoring of staff activities easier at both the field and head offices. The organization has also initiated a mechanism to ensure proper documentation of the most of the happenings in the organization including all types meetings etc. so that better information management can be achieved. HR policies have started evolving further. The organization has started visiting campuses few B-schools in around Hyderabad to recruit competent staff to take up the challenging jobs in the integrated mF. To retain the existing staff various staff development programmes were conducted by the organization such as exposure visits, trainings etc. The staff was provided on job assistance by Chairman, CEO and AVPs as there was considerable emphasis placed in mentoring and coaching the young professionals. Having established a name for its self the organization inspires confidence among the staff to proudly say that they are part of the large movement. The staff is highly committed to stretch themselves to go the extra mile. This may backfire in future as there is chance of them being subjected to stress, as found out from the survey of organization climate. With its credible work the organization has successfully finalized its formal written MoU with the largest client, Velugu. It recognized the importance of having its own models to show the interested in the sector, that what an ideal SHG/Federation should look like etc and also to field test its various upcoming products on pilot basis. So as part of its ‘model building’ and ‘piloting’ exercises the organization has started identifying the model mandals

where all the CBOs existing in the mandal will be developed as sustainable institutions. These exercises are helping APMAS in playing the ‘doer’ role in addition to the facilitator role as these activities keep abreast it with the ground realities. Under these programmes, the organization has currently involved in building the vision of the Mandal Samakyas in these mandals so that in due course Business Development Services also can be provided. The role has started transforming into an ‘enabler’ from the ‘facilitator’, as it has started providing customized technical assistance as per the needs of the clients. The work of APMAS was also got recognition in other parts of the country and it started building CB providers in the states of Orissa and West Bengal under the CASHE project by the CARE. As part of exporting its work the organization also participated in many national and international seminars and workshops.The credibility it has achieved with the government organizations was synergized for better causes such as influencing the government policies. On the insistence of APMAS, SERP has passed a GO on the guidelines to be followed by various constituents who will be participating in the ‘convergence’ process.

6. AREAS OF CONCERN While it is looking forward to grow fast there are few problems it had to overcome while playing its roles effectively. It is increasingly getting difficult for the organization to meet the clients growing diversified needs and also live up to their expectations with the limited competent staff. Finding the competent staff was been a problem and may continue to pose challenge to the organization as there is genuine shortage of the professional in the job market to work on the APMAS’ functional areas. Despite, it created a provision for internal subsidization of the fee it is charging from the clients from its services still there are few promoters and also the groups/federations who are feeling that the its services are costly to afford. They also rue that APMAS services doesn’t deserve such huge payments offered by them as these services have failed in achieving the important objective i.e. availing loan from the banks for them. It has created a strong resentment among the clients and subsequently resulted in no repeated user base. As there is no re-demand for QA services and hence no QE requirement thus failing of both the activities in ensuring continuous revenues except the new customers. This projects a stark and gloomy

picture of the organization as though it is seeing monies now but its financial sustainability in the long run based on fee is in doubt. Considering these developments APMAS should explore other possibilities such as creating a corpus fund from the excess revenue it is being able to generate since last 3 years with the due consent of DFID-CARE and exploring collaborations with the new donor agencies. The organization though expressing that it can cash up on both the options and achieve favorable outcomes quite confidently to bring cashes to its kitty, there are always the chances of happening the other way. If this happened the organization no doubt has to start its wind up operation. To avoid this embarrassing situations as preventive measures it can chalk out strategies to increase its re-user base by reducing the fee further or by following any other measure as fitting to it according to situation prevailing. Though, APMAS is trying to work with the banks and other financial institutions through sensitization & advocacy works at the state and district levels to develop collaborations, there was no much progress it could achieve in bringing the qualitative changes in these collaborations with banks and FIs. This is mainly due to the target oriented approach coupled with tremendous pressure from the state govt and also the indifference attitude exhibited by these FIs and banks towards the organization activities especially the QA .There are strong remarks from the few stake holders on this activity as bankers may never trust the rating mechanisms as these ratings are only contemporary and talks about the present .Advancing the loans based on these very ratings, to the groups is detrimental to the business of the banks. APMAS can address this lack of credibility with the bankers about their activities, by working in close with the banks at the branch level and address their immediate concerns. It is the branch manager who should be taken into confidence through out the process of assessment. Simultaneously APMAS should also focus on standardizing the process of quality assessment by fixing a same anchor point at all occasions. Few of the clients are criticized APMAS for its improper service where the organization time and again is failing in adopting better follow up every after a QA exercise was finished. The organization could attach these deficiencies in service type of problems by integrating both the QA and QE activities to work mutually and non exclusively Its problems got compounded with lack of clarity among many client organizations about its role and existence. Some view it as rating agency, others as a training agency or both. Few even don’t know what role it is playing and should play. Some of the clients are still seeing it

as government organization including few board members such as MACS presidents/CEOs. APMAS is responsible for this entire situation as it hadn’t clearly defined what role they are playing during the last 3 years at various points of time as they themselves doesn’t know how quick their roles have transformed. Being overambitious organization it had failed in institutionalizing the realistic plans when it is rapidly growing. If it would have followed all the suggestions given it would have quelled effectively the notion that ‘ambiguity is the reality’ of APMAS. Howsoever bureaucratic back up the organization is enjoying it is ultimately the individual personalities among these bureaucrats who make the difference. Hence the government policies with changing priorities of ruling political parties may tilt the balance against the organization and can create existence problems forget about the survival problems.

7. RECOMMENDATIONS While playing the enabler role it should stress on sensitizing the political leaders and should encourage the formation of network of NGOs working in mF sector and federations/MS to create a great voice for them, by following the footsteps of few pioneer organizations such as WASAN, which created a network of NGOs working on watershed projects. It should also perform innovative research and regular advocacy to enhance its goodwill credibility and also to guide the sector in proper direction .It should only focus on expansion of elementary functions such as livelihoods, grass root support and institution building and should not diversify into other new activities.

8. CONCLUSIONS As already mentioned it can overcome the challenges but it may not over come the stumbling blocks such as unavailability of competent staff in the job market and dynamic government policies. By addressing few burning issues if it can stick to it vision and purpose, APMAS will stand as an epitome of unique and systematic 5 tier state level people supporting institution, to look after the capacity building needs of SMFIs in mF sector.

9. REFERENCES 1. BASIX, Vikasa Darshini, CARE (Ed 1998) “ Feasibility Study for Setting up State level body to provide technical support to SHGs/Federation promoters” , Mahila Abhivruddi Society, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad 2. Ruthven Orlanada (Ed 2001). “Draft proposal on setting up of APMAS”, Mahila Abhivruddi Society, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad 3. Annual Progress Reports of APMAS 4. Revised BDP of APMAS (2003-2008) 5. Earlier BDP of APMAS (2001-2006) 6. DFID-CARE Review Reports 7. Minutes of Board and core team meetings of APMAS 8. MoUs documents Velugu and DFID-CARE through CASHE.

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