Alternative banking for and by the poor – case study from Vietnam

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INTRODUCTION

Poverty has long been associated with the countries of East and Southeast Asia – especially countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam. Mention of such poverty conjures up many images and perceptions especially amongst people in the industrialized world. We have become used to viewing the poor as a problem awaiting solutions from ‘development experts’, government or private aid programmes and volunteers. There are severe limitations in this view and grave dangers should it determine strategies to overcome poverty.

The dangers are in our own way of seeing and thinking and acting about people who happen to be poor. Our problems lies not in grasping the realities of poverty but in the hidden assumptions we make about the poor and the role we ascribe to them in overcoming poverty. Much of the writing a research on poverty and development continues to place considerable weight on the view is that poverty is, largely, self inflicted and that it has become a self-generating phenomenon. In policy terms, this means that the focus of action becomes what the poor are doing to themselves, on obstacles to their adopting ‘modern’ methods and practices. Such an approach ignores the reality of what is actually happening to the poor. Equally, the dominant emphasis is on what needs to be done for the poor and not on what the poor are doing themselves.

The essential difference is between seeing the poor as the objects of development or aid programmes rather than as the subjects of their own development. Challenging the dominant view and supporting programmes and approaches which build upon the experience and capabilities of the poor has long been the tradition of any voluntary development agencies working in this region – including the agencies which make up the CIDSE programme in Vietnam.