Content area
Full Text
Abstract
This study assesses the effectiveness of the strategy and the complementary interventions of the Sustainable Livelihood Program's Self-Employment Assistance Kaunlaran (SLP SEA-K). The SLP SEA-K uses a microcredit strategy to provide credit access to the poor, improve the ability of the group to borrow, and enable it to engage in income-generating activities. Microcredit services are generally believed to have a positive socioeconomic impact; however, the success of projects may depend largely on the management of the program. The authors found out that the government lacks the capacity to handle microcredit programs. Additionally, they see the one-size-fits-all strategy of the program as a problem because of the diverse range of beneficiary profiles.
1 Introduction
The Self-Employment Assistance Kaunlaran (or SEA-K) Program is one of the social programs of the government that has survived several administrations. It started as a local program in the early 1970s and became a national program administered by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in 1993. The program adopted a microcredit strategy patterned after the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh that provides small loans to the poor to encourage entrepreneurial activity and savings generation.
Until 2010, SEA-K remained the core financial assistance program of the DSWD. In 2011, it was transformed into the Sustainable Livelihood Program or SLP that provided a two-track livelihood assistance scheme: (1) employment facilitation and (2) microenterprise development.1 The employment track opened opportunities for marginalized households to access employment, while the microenterprise track focused on providing assistance to entrepreneurial activities of the households. The SEA-K scheme became the track toward microenterprise development.
As a component of the microenterprise track, the SEA-K scheme was redesigned to capacitate target families with entrepreneurial skills and engage them in microenterprise activities. The main strategies include skills and entrepreneurial trainings, participatory livelihood analysis, and market linkages. Although financial support from the government is less emphasized, beneficiaries can still tap the SEA-K capital fund for financing but only as a "fund of last resort". Households with interest to engage in microenterprise development are first linked to banks, microfinance and other lending institutions. Only those households considered ineligible for credit in these formal markets, and those residing in areas not reached by microfinance services, may have access to the SEA-K fund.
...