An Assessment of the Capacity and Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions: The Philippine Case

Despite the government’s credit program approach, access of poor households to microfinancial services has remained limited. This paper explains the microfinance policy environment in the Philippines and evaluates the institutional and financial capacity/performance constraints of MFIs. This also addresses four areas that will allow MFIs to be self-sustaining financial institutions for the poor.microfinance, poverty alleviation, microfinance institutions

A NONLINEAR MODEL OF INFORMATION AND COORDINATION IN HOG PRODUCTION: TESTING THE COASIAN-FOWLERIAN DYNAMIC HYPOTHESES

The pig-cycle 'explanation' expunded by Coase and Fowler followed a well-integrated economic logic and provides tremendous insight into our understanding of commodity cycles. The paper presents a simulation model that replicates all of Coase and Fowler's results and tests its robustness with an application to U.S. hog production.Livestock Production/Industries, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

An Assessment of the Capacity and Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions: The Philippine Case

Despite the government’s credit program approach, access of poor households to microfinancial services has remained limited. This paper explains the microfinance policy environment in the Philippines and evaluates the institutional and financial capacity/performance constraints of MFIs. This also addresses four areas that will allow MFIs to be self-sustaining financial institutions for the poor.microfinance, poverty alleviation, microfinance institutions

Branded apps in Spain as a means of communicating trends in fashion

Apps are of great interest and curiosity for the users of mobile phones, being already highly unloaded and used for the users of smartphones. The fashion mobile applications represent only a fraction of the mobile global applications (almost 0,2 %), nevertheless they are starting to deserve special attention from designers and researchers in this area. Brands want to know about the new trends in the market to be able to continue surprising and impressing their public. In this study, we seek to identify the most relevant aspects of the applications that help to improve the image of the Spanish prêt-à-porter fashion brands such as Zara, Pull and Bear, Stradivarius, Shana, Bimba y Lola,... The study considers the position in the ranking of downloads, the category, the opinions, valuations of the users and the criteria described by Jami Lawrence (2010): amusement, saving of time and / or comfort in the use. Findings: In this analysis, we seek to identify the most relevant aspects of the applications that help to improve the image of the brand, in this particular case of the Spanish prêt-à-porter fashion brands. - It is indispensable that the applications entertain the user, save time and / or comfort, we have observed that they are these characteristics those that are valued by the users. - Another factor that is valued in the applications, is that the application should make sense for the user and to have an added value that doesn't necessarily have to be related with the nature of the brand. - But it is important that applications to be developed have to be coherent with the identity of the brand. As in any other area, the appearance of new mass media, like the mobile, is the introduction of new challenges. – Finally, it is important for the brand to adapt constantly to the new technologies, but we must not forget that a precarious incorporation and badly developed app it can be more harmful than beneficial

Soft Skills Needed by the Tertiary Students During Pandemic

This study aims to describe the soft or personal skills of the B.S. Information Technology students of Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology, Nueva Ecija, Philippines, in School Year 2020-2021. To describe the students' skills, percentage, weighted mean, and ranking were used. Generally, the results showed that students believed that the top 2 essential skills during the pandemic are negotiation and stress management. For them, speaking in a friendly manner and clarifying in case of misunderstanding are critical in a negotiation. On the other hand, respondents highlighted that requirements must be done before the deadline to be free from stress

Occupational Therapy in a Daytime Homeless Shelter Setting

Occupational therapy (OT) is an allied health profession that works with individuals on improving their engagement and performance in meaningful occupations. This doctoral capstone project (DCE) was completed at Ministry with Community (MwC), a daytime shelter and resource center. There is emerging but limited literature regarding the role of OT working within a homeless shelter setting. Additionally, individuals experiencing homelessness are at risk for occupational injustice, or restriction to engagement in meaningful life activities. The primary goal of this DCE was to improve engagement in meaningful occupations. The focus was program development with a secondary focus on advocacy. The objectives for this project were the following: 1. Provide individualized, client-centered interventions to individual members 2. Collaborate with staff regarding member goals and care. 3. Design and offer group classes. 4. Assist with development of the restorative justice program. The most utilized OT interventions were case management, coping skills training, chronic health condition management, and job skills training. There were fourteen intervention themes in total. This DCE describes the interventions used, outlines group intervention curriculum, and explores the relevance of occupational and restorative justice within the field of occupational therapy

Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropies from the large-N limit of global defects

We determine the full C_l spectra and correlation functions of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the CMB, generated by a source modeled by the large N limit of spontaneously broken global O(N)-theories. We point out a problem in the standard approach of treating the radiation-matter transition by interpolating the eigenvectors of the unequal-time correlators of the source energy-momentum tensor. This affects the CMB predictions from all type of cosmic defects. We propose a method to overcome this difficulty, and find that in the large-N global model that we study, differences in the final CMB power spectra amplitudes reach up to 25%, when compared to implementations of the eigenvector interpolation technique. We discuss as well how to optimally search for the contribution in the CMB from active sources such as cosmic defects, in experiments like Planck, COrE and PRISM.Comment: 16+4 pages, 13 figures (Version 2: minor changes to match published version in PRD

The local B-polarization of the CMB: a very sensitive probe of cosmic defects

We present a new and especially powerful signature of cosmic strings and other topological or non-topological defects in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that even if defects contribute 1% or less in the CMB temperature anisotropy spectrum, their signature in the local $\tilde{B}$-polarization correlation function at angular scales of tens of arc minutes is much larger than that due to gravitational waves from inflation, even if the latter contribute with a ratio as big as $r\simeq 0.1$ to the temperature anisotropies. We show that when going from non-local to local $\tilde{B}$-polarization, the ratio of the defect signal-to-noise with respect to the inflationary value increases by about an order of magnitude. Proposed B-polarization experiments, with a good sensitivity on arcminute scales, may either detect a contribution from topological defects produced after inflation or place stringent limits on them. Even Planck should be able to improve present constraints on defect models by at least an order of magnitude, to the level of \ep <10^{-7}. A future full-sky experiment like CMBpol, with polarization sensitivities of the order of $1\mu$K-arcmin, will be able to constrain the defect parameter \ep=Gv^2 to a few $\times10^{-9}$, depending on the defect model.Comment: Version Published in Physics Letters

Microfinance In The Philippines: An Assessment of Viability, Sustainability and Outreach among Grameen Replicators

The Philippines, a country of great promise in the 1950s, has greatly lagged behind many other Asian countries. Between 1991 and 1994 urban poverty declined from 26% to 29%; but rural poverty virtually stagnated at a much higher rate: 55% and 54%, respectively. Poverty lending programs were instituted in vast numbers, but undermined the viability of the institutions while their impact remained insignificant. Large numbers of self-help groups and NGOs have been trying to fill the void. Yet those institutions that focus on the poor lack the capacity for substantial outreach to the poor, while those that possess the capacity lack the focus. Despite recent liberalization efforts, policymakers in the Philippines, unlike those in Indonesia, have relied more on government intervention and credit channeling than the self-reliant intermediation of marketoriented microfinance institutions (MFIs). In the framework of a wider UNDP-supported program of the Asian and Pacific Development Centre in Kuala Lumpur on Microfinance for the Poor in Asia-Pacific, seven MFIs were selected from the Philippines and analyzed in terms of outreach to the poor, resource mobilization, viability and sustainability: six credit NGOs and one cooperative rural bank. All but one of them use the Grameen technology in reaching the poor, replicating Prof. Yunus?s Grameen Bank model so highly successful in Bangladesh. All but one of the MFIs were found subsidy-dependent and donor-driven, though they do adhere to the creed of market rates of interest. Only the cooperative bank, which applies both the conventional individual and the Grameen-type group-group technology and was is therefore analyzed in greater detail, was found to be operationally and financially self-sufficient. Yet it showed little capacity for dynamic growth. While its Grameen-type group technology was profitable and multiplied the bank's outreach, it added so little to its overall profits that management considers its termination. One recommendation stands out from the case studies: transform credit NGOs into formal financial institutions that rely on their own internal resources and cover their costs from the margin! Stop using them as credit channels! --