Abstract
There is good reason to combine education with microcredit for poverty alleviation in the poor communities of the developing world, including in Indonesia. Poverty is dangerous, it deprives people of their right to education, their right to good health, their right to freedom of speech, their right to democracy, their right to financial services and of course their right to knowledge enhancement, which are all crucial to living a better life. We must therefore, provide services beyond, credits for the poor. In this case, education should be included to each and every development agenda for the poor since it is key to any positive change and sustainable development of people. If well planned and well integrated within the microcredit services, education can serve a good purpose in poverty alleviation. This paper describes how education and microfinance have been used in combination to alleviate poverty in Indonesia, especially in the areas studied. The study uses a multi-cases approach to examine the purposively selected baitul maal tamwil (BMTs) organisations, which are sharia based semiformal microfinance institutions regarded to be among those few integrating education with their financial services.
Highlights
Indonesia is a huge country, divided with Islands, and with a diversity of language(s), religion(s), and culture and with a wide geographical location
With the above curriculum content, it is evident that the two organisations are combining education in their financial services
Though they may not be calling such programmes education. We categorised this as education since there learning objectives, schedule and a stated time frame for the programmes
Summary
Indonesia is a huge country, divided with Islands, and with a diversity of language(s), religion(s), and culture and with a wide geographical location. The country faces a lot of the development challenges which include poverty and incompetent human resources moreso in the informal sector where the majority of the people are poor. This makes education and poverty alleviation some of the national development agenda(s). Microfinance has been in place for a number of years. Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) is proud of its success story in providing microcredits to the grassroot communities for over one hundred years now. According to Seibel “the sector comprises some 6,300 formal and 47,200 semiformal microfinance outlets, serving about 47 million deposit accounts and 32 million loan accounts.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
