CRESS Dialogue

wo Way OutCRESS Dialogue is a two weeks hands-on CRESS capital exploration. Participants meet our target clientele (poor women and young people participating in the program). Participants interact with them seeing, listening, sharing and experiencing in profound ways clients’ daily stories of struggles, passions, strengths and resilience. Frontline staff and volunteers share first hand experiences executing the curriculum. Participants will gain insight into:

• How to target both at field and program levels especially when targeting the poor in geographically hard to reach communities
• How to continually evaluate to maintain products and services that are still relevant, and design and integrate new products and services that address current needs.
• How to determine the money value of each component of CRESS in each community.
• How to aid target clientele identify the different problems they face, how the problems are related, determine the type of relationship, prioritize the issues, propose short and long-term solutions and spearhead concrete actions in the form of products and services to be integrated in the stream of existing services.
• How to integrate culture and clients’ values in policies, procedures, products and services while mainstreaming identified issues hindering women empowerment
• How to design products, services, policies, procedures and practices that ensure a near 100% loan repayments and active participation and a sense of ownership and responsibility in target clienteles.
• How to design and operate poverty alleviation program that meet concurrently institutional goal of financial sustainability with the goal of reaching the poorer of the poor.
• How to design and operate poverty alleviation programs that shine opportunities and motivate target clientele to work relentlessly towards their goals and dreams.

Participants to CRESS Dialogue are:

• staff of poverty alleviation programs.
• students and teachers of gender and development, international relations, finance, economics and public health.
• Funders of poverty alleviation programs, public health and educational projects.
• Social researchers
• Advocates of women’s empowerment and leadership programs.
• Microfinance institutions.
• Human rights and policy makers
• Individuals and communities interested in addressing the problem of poverty in the community.
• Other stakeholders in the fight against poverty.