Breastfeeding and Social Responsibility in Microfinance
4 August 2009 at 12:48 suearthur 5 comments
By Susan Arthur, KF8 (Kiva Fellow 8th Class) in Nicaragua
This week marks World Breastfeeding Week prompting me to contemplate how microfinance and breastfeeding play important roles in alleviating poverty.
More than 80% of Kiva entrepreneurs are women, many of whom are mothers with home-based businesses where they can easily satisfy their baby’s hunger and provide for their optimal growth by breastfeeding. Indeed, on a few occasions, Kiva field partners have posted profile photos on Kiva’s site of borrowers nursing their babies.
Could breastfeeding rates serve as a tool to assess social performance in microfinance? What if Kiva were to encourage its microfinance partners to include breastfeeding initiation and duration rates in their social performance and responsibility assessments?
World Breastfeeding Week
Breastfeeding is a matter of food and health. UNICEF says that optimal breastfeeding in the first two years of life, especially exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, can have the single largest impact on child survival of all preventative interventions, with the potential to prevent 12% to 15% of all deaths to children under the age of 5 in the developing world.
The World Health Organization says that the aim should be to create and sustain an environment that encourages frequent breastfeeding for children up to two years of age or beyond.
In many areas of the world and in emergency situations, children and families often have to live without adequate safe water and sanitation which increases their risk of infections. Breast milk offers immune support against some infections. In areas where clean water is lacking, the use of powdered milks and powdered formulas can increase the risk of illnesses such as diarrhea, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in newborns.
Last November, an Ethiopian microfinance institution (MFI), Buusaa Gonofaa, won the 2nd European Microfinance Award 2008 for “Socially Responsible Microfinance.” Hosted by the European Microfinance Platform, the award honored the MFI for developing a poverty scorecard or “social ledger” to determine the needs of its customers (80% of whom are women) and evaluate changes in their social well-being.
The 2008 award, which included EUROS 100,000 in prize money, spotlighted initiatives that “do good” by putting an MFI’s social mission into practice, ensuring a positive economic and social impact on clients and their families. Buusaa Gonofaa loan officers use the social ledger to interview clients on 20 indicators that fall into five categories: housing condition, household assets, business growth, food security and children’s education.
From the initial intake Buusaa Gonofaa loan officers obtain baseline data to accurately measure community poverty levels and follow up after each loan cycle to score, assess and capture their clients’ change and progress over time. I would add “health” as the sixth category to their scorecard, placing breastfeedng initiation and duration rates under their Social Responsibilities Measurable Indicator along with food security and education indicators.
I hope that applications for the 3rd European Microfinance Award in 2010 will feature microfinance and maternal/child health social responsibility initiatives. To read more about the 2nd European Microfinance Award along with case studies, including a profile of CEPRODEL, my Kiva field partner, see European Dialogue Number 2, May 2009 (PDF).
Kiva Fellow (KF8 CEPRODEL Nicaragua) Susan Arthur is a certified doula (DONA), a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator, and a prenatal and postpartum yoga instructor. Following her Kiva Fellowship, she hopes to pursue a masters in public health. She invites you to join CEPRODEL’s Lending Team.
Entry filed under: Africa, All, Americas, blogsherpa, CEPRODEL, Countries, KF8 (Kiva Fellows 8th Class), Nicaragua. Tags: breastfeeding, maternal/infant health, nursing, public health, social performance, social responsibility, working mothers, World Breastfeeding Week.
1. Teri Shilling | 5 August 2009 at 06:40
What a thoughtful post you have made! There is such an economic cost in regards to formula – the actual cost to purchase, the health costs when fresh, clean water isn’t available, the more frequent medical complications formula fed babies have.
The cost to formula feed a baby can be much higher than the micro-finance loans are!
And the research is still being conducted but preliminary thoughts are that a baby whose mother is HIV positive and is exclusively breastfed may have a lower infection rate. And antiretroviral drugs also have an impact.
Keep doing the great work you are doing!
2. Jessica W | 4 August 2009 at 21:53
I’m the mom of an adopted child from Ethiopia. One of the things that I learned there is that breastfeeding is understood to be important for the baby’s health as well as for economics–there are frequently shortages of milk and formula in Africa, India and the middle east, which in some cases can lead to the death of children, or children being relinquished to orphan homes to prevent starvation.
As a result, many families allow their children to be nursed by neighbors, orphanages workers or wet-nurses that are hired if they are unable, or too ill, to nurse.
Something that most people did not know there is that HIV can be transmitted through breastfeeding frmo the nursing woman to the child–and from the child to the nursing woman–if she has open sores, etc.
As many HIV infections are undiagnosed or hidden due to social prejudices, nursing can also be a very serious risk to otherwise not-infected children.
A child can be born without HIV to a mother who has it–and later contract the virus through breastfeeding.
As you might have imagined, I’ve gone to lengths to learn about the issue–breast feeding is critically important for nutrition and development of a child–but my child came home HIV positive at the age of three. It is unknown if she contracted the virus at birth or from nursing, and if nursing–from her mother or from a caretaker. She’d been in an orphange for 18 months before she joined our family, so it’s certianly possible that she’d been allowed to be breast-fed by a wet nurse during a formula shortage or due to an intolerance to the available soy formula.
I hope that any promotion of breastfeeding will be tempered with some high-quality bloodborne pathogens training as well. Thanks Kiva for your good work–I believe that you are saving lives, and truly “raising all boats.”
3. Unilove | 4 August 2009 at 21:30
Very informational post, with statistics that indicate the importance of breastfeeding for the children’s healthy futures…
Unilove aka Lisa
Kiva Fellows fan
4. zevlowe | 4 August 2009 at 15:16
Hi Susan, thanks so much for writing about this. I am of two minds about this issue. Of course I believe infant nutrition is super important. But I am also very conscious of the need to respect our clients’ privacy.
As clients who are paying interest on the money they borrow, shouldn’t they have the same rights to privacy and self-determination as we do with our mortgage or credit card debt? I feel that way about a lot of social performance metrics, but particularly with breastfeeding and other issues that have to do with a person’s rights over his or her own body.
5. Lourdes | 4 August 2009 at 14:39
I think documenting the rates of breastfeeding women in their social performance and responsibility as enterprenuers is a great idea. i do not know how the European or North American societies will take them, but still is a great idea.
I lost my job because of my baby my boss literally told me that I would not be able to manage the stress…so it would be interesting to know how women in different cultures and societies manage “the stress” maybe without a judgemental society