United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent federal government agency responsible for providing economic and humanitarian assistance, has funded microfinance development projects for over three decades. In fiscal year 2008 alone, USAID reported $259.4 million in funding for microfinance development projects in 69 countries.[1] Given the sheer number and monetary value of microfinance development projects funded by USAID, the documentation generated by these projects is similarly prolific. The question that is the focus of this series of articles on this topic is: how does USAID share its cumulative store of microfinance knowledge and know-how? Simply put, how accessible is the USAID database of microfinance knowledge to microfinance professionals and the industry as a whole?
There are two main ways USAID shares its vast store of microfinance knowledge, namely through microLINKS.org and through the Development Experience System (DEXS).[1,2] microLINKS.org, an independent website, not only holds some of the several USAID program related materials but also, has nodes of interconnectivity among USAID microfinance practitioners, including webcasts, virtual conferences and e-newsletters from the field.[1] Some of the USAID program materials available on microLINKS include country reports, project specific documents and indepth, topical research reports.[2] The primary challenge in locating a specific document or connecting to the different interactive features on microLINKS is that they are not centrally located in a searchable database or webpage.[2] Rather, the documents are listed according to their affiliation with a particular USAID microfinance program, of which there are several.[2] Hence, unless the user is affiliated or familiar with the a particular USAID program, he/she would probably not know in advance to participate in a specific webcast or locate a particular document.
USAID also maintains its own online database of agency-funded technical and program related documents called the Development Experience System (DEXS).[3] At the writing of this article, DEXS contained approximately 1853 discrete entries for microfinance related documents and promises more documents will be uploaded.[3] The unique feature about the DEXS database is that it holds USAID evaluation reports specific to a USAID sponsored microfinance project, including, evaluation summaries, special evaluations, audit reports, final evaluations, Non-USAID evaluations. The DEXS system holds all these documents in a central database that is searchable by country, topic or even project identification number. The system is due to be overhauled and relaunched by USAID in the near future and promises more search capabilities.
Make your comment at:
http://microfinanceassociation.ning.com/forum/topic/search?q=knowledge+m…
By Hio Kyeng Lee, Research Associate
Bibliography:
[1] microLINKS.org: Microenterprise Learning, Information and Knowledge sharing, located at: http://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=8390_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC
[2] Knowledge clusters are organized around USAID programs, as follows: Accelerated Microenterprise Advancement Project (AMAP) publications and resources are housed on microLINKS.org, located at,http://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=1222_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC; Communities of Practice (CoP) located at: http://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=7833_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC; Microenterprise Best Practices Project (MBP) Project and Microenterprise Innovation Project (MIP) website are housed on microLINKS, located at, http://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=2134_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC; Microenterprise Results Reporting (MRR) database of annual reports beginning in 1997, located at, http://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=1177_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC; Financial Integration, Economic Leveraging, Broad-Based Dissemination and Support program (FIELD-Support), located at, http://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=17068_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC
[3] USAID Development Experience System located at, http://dec.usaid.gov/ (contains 69,100 USAID funded technical and program documentation in pdf form for free).
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