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{Anrede_EN},
This is our last newsletter for the year and before I give you a summary of all achievements and news covered below, I would like to take some time on behalf of the whole IAS team to express our gratitude for all new partnerships, which allowed us to work with you, to benefit your institution, your clients, and the whole development finance sector worldwide. We wish you a season of joy and peace, and look forward to continued success and mutual collaborations in 2018.
First and foremost, I would like to announce that we have now moved into the brand new Frankfurt School Campus, located in Adickesallee, Frankfurt’s northern district, where we hope to host numerous trainings and events during the new year. I am also happy to share our progress in different projects from around the world. You can read about all 2017 milestones in our EaSI TA project, which supports microfinance institutions in Europe. We also organized two events in Tajikistan – a Climate Resilience Excellence Award Ceremony to recognize the successful work of loan officers from
partner financial institutions and the 4th Agribusiness Investment Forum bringing together local producers and international agribusinesses. Frankfurt School also signed a Memoranda of Understanding with Business Development Partners in Malawi to support Small Business with technical assistance. After the first successful kick-off of the Adaptation Finance Fellowship Programme (AFFP), we have launched a second call for applications for professionals from developing and emerging countries. Last but not least, we had another successful Winter Leadership Academy and many new certified expert
courses and other programmes launched in 2017 by our Development Finance e-Campus.
Enjoy the reading and have a happy holiday season!
Fatma Dirkes
Director of International Advisory Services
and Vice President of FS
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On Thursday, October 26, 2017, Frankfurt School celebrated the official opening of our new campus in Adickesallee, Frankfurt’s Nordend district. The event was attended by nearly 1,000 guests, including employees, current students, alumni and numerous guests from the worlds of business, academia and politics. Dr Thomas Schäfer, Hesse’s Minister of Finance, gave the opening address, and Professor Dr Alfred Grosser, the Franco-German political scientist and commentator, delivered the keynote speech. “Among other things, the new campus is a
symbol of Frankfurt School’s successful development over the last few years – and it is the hard work of our staff and employees that has made this new building possible. For years, they have quite literally slogged away, showing enormous commitment and vision, working in the most disciplined way at national and international level, tackling new challenges courageously and at times unconventionally, making the impossible possible, and at all times holding fast to the Frankfurt School vision,” asserted Professor Steffens. You can read more about the event here or explore the
photo gallery.
For more information contact: Robert Leonhardt (r.leonhardt@fs.de)
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Over the past year, the
Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) Programme continued its commitment to addressing financial exclusion by supporting microfinance initiatives in Europe, making funds and technical assistance available and accessible for vulnerable groups, through micro and social enterprises. In fact, since the beginning of the project 63 microcredit providers (MCPs) from 24 European countries have benefitted from the free services
offered by EaSI TA. You can watch the EaSI TA video presenting all services available and featuring testimonials that demonstrate the impact and the success of the programme
here. In 2017 alone, 14 MCPs took part in capacity building trainings, 10 in compliance with the Code for microcredit provision trainings, and 12 benefited from both type of TA services in the same year. Our EaSI TA experts helped the microfinance institutions (MFIs) improve their operations in a large array of areas such as Credit and Risk Management, Strategic Planning, Good Governance and Social Performance, Management Information System (MIS), and more. |
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Throughout the year, many European MFIs also received institutional assessments, ratings and Code compliance evaluations, which helped determine the institutions level of development, their main opportunities and weaknesses, as well as long-term sustainability and creditworthiness, which helped determine future training needs. In 2017 alone, the rating consortium performed 41 appraisals, from which 21 Code evaluations, 15 institutional assessments and 5 institutional ratings. As a result of the Code compliance trainings and the efforts of the MFIs to improve
their operations, 2017 saw the first seven organisations being recognised as compliant with the European Code of Good Conduct for Microcredit Provision. Qredits (the Netherlands), ADIE (France), Microfinance Ireland, PerMicro (Italy), AFI (Greece), good.bee Credit (Romania) and TISE (Poland) were all awarded a Certificate for Compliance, which underlines that they are operating according to best practice in the EU microfinance market and gives them access to guarantees and TA programmes available through the EU Commission.
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2017 was also a great year for the European microfinance sector in terms of best practise sharing, peer learning and exchange of expertise. Overall eight EaSI TA events took place in Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Serbia. These events contained nine workshops on microfinance topics and three thematic seminars on mutual learning, which attracted more than 400 participants, representing both microfinance practitioners, as well as the wider public, such as NGOs, governmental bodies and others. The events covered both wider topics such as
access to financial instruments, empowerment of entrepreneurs via microfinance or creating favourable regulatory frameworks for microfinance, as well as more detailed sessions on product development and distribution channels in rural areas or risk and credit management.
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The ceremony was attended by more than 100 guests, including representatives of the Government of Tajikistan, the donor community, international and local financial institutions, beneficiaries, and other guests such as national press and TV. The second day of the Ceremony was dedicated to site visits. Donors and partners from the financial institutions visited three beneficiaries and were presented the actual projects, which are supported by CLIMADAPT project.
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From 27th November 2017 to 1st December 2017 Frankfurt School hosted its third Leadership Winter Academy. The Academy was a great success with 39 participants from 20 countries from all around the world. For the first time we also offered a two-weeks-long version of the course, the Extended Leadership Winter Academy. This option was mainly designed for students from the Online Programme Master of Leadership in Development Finance. Six participants from the programme made use of this offer and extended their stay with another week to deepen their leadership
skills and earn an addition of 6 ECTS credits. The participants from programmes, the regular one-week Academy, as well as the extended two-week version, were very happy with all activities and excited to get to know Frankfurt School’s new Campus.
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For the last two years Frankfurt School has been providing a practical and effective support to the EIB loan lending operations with two commercial banks in Malawi. In addition to this our expert team has also organised numerous events for medium and small businesses and start-ups. The aim for those events, co-organized with local business-development incubators, was to raise the financial literacy and improve the managerial capacity of these entrepreneurs. These initiatives helped identify additional creditworthy entrepreneurial clients and expand the
commercial banks target market. Following the great up-take and the motivated engagement of the incubator staff, as well as the positive feedback from the banks, in November 2017 Frankfurt School has signed a Memoranda of Understanding to further support MSME entrepreneurs with our partners – EMNET and Dzuka Africa in Blantyre, and mHub in Lilongwe. The goal of these partnerships is to form a strategic alliance to design and implement business development and management courses for M/SME entrepreneurs in Malawi.
For more information contact: Irene Loder (i.loder@fs.de)
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A very successful and exciting e-learning year is coming to an end. We would like to share with you the most remarkable achievements of 2017: In March we launched three new courses: the Certified Expert in Climate Adaptation Finance
(CECAF), the Certified Expert in Financial & Managerial Accounting
(CEFMA) and our first course in Spanish, the
Certificado de Experto en Administración de Riesgos (Certified Expert in Risk Management). In the beginning of spring, the Adaptation Finance Fellowship Programme
(AFFP) was also first launched. The Fellows started their learning experience with the new Climate Adaptation Finance course and continued with two on-site trainings in Frankfurt. |
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The Paris Agreement has garnered attention to the need to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and to foster climate resilience in developing countries. After the first successful kick-off of the Adaptation Finance Fellowship Programme (AFFP) in beginning of this year, hosting 18 Fellows from 16 different countries, the FS-UNEP Collaboration Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance and the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) have opened the second call for 18 fellowships for professionals from developing and emerging countries
for the AFFP – Linking Research, Policy and Business, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
During the 18-month blended programme, fellows will be equipped with the state-of-the-art knowledge in adaptation finance, allowing them to mobilise finance and increase investments for climate resilient development in their respective home countries and beyond. The AFFP is looking for applications from candidates working in the policy or business sector or conducting research, including adaptation finance, climate resilience or climate risk management etc. The application deadline is 31st January 2018. For more information visit the AFFP website -
www.adaptation-fellowships.org
For more information contact: Jonas Fleer ( j.fleer@fs.de)
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