Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF): Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) Case Study

Adopting social performance measurement in MFIs

This case study describes the implementation of Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) by Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF) in the Philippines, and details how the organization uses the results to enhance its outreach to poor borrowers.

NWTF is among the largest MFIs in the Grameen Foundation network with 37 branches and more than 70,000 clients in the Visayas region of the Philippines. The NWTF management needed a tool that was objectively benchmarked to national and international poverty lines and could give an accurate snapshot of poverty likelihood.

The implementation of PPI revealed some basic flaws in NWTF's existing assessment systems. For instance, 41% of NWTF's entering clients were above the poverty line. Within 2 years of implementing PPI, NWTF made the following improvements:

Setting a target of 90% of entering clients to be below poverty line;
Refining its census approach to data gathering;
Adjusting loan size and cycle to provide more options to the poorest;
Comparing branch data to identify effective products and services;
Collecting information on several indicators to help refine products and services.