Community Spotlight

I’d like to give a big thank you to the ThoughtWorks HSP team. Their team has only been a part of our community a few weeks but it seems like they’ve been with us for years. They’ve helped us at a critical time in the launch of Mifos X to our developer community. They’re putting the infrastructure in place to guide a smooth transition to our community-driven development model on top of the Mifos X platform.  

Here’s a guest post from Gurpreet on what’s been keeping them busy so far.

Recently, folks from ThoughtWorks started contributing to Mifos X as part of their Humanitarian Software Program (HSP). HSP is a ThoughtWorks initiative to help Humanitarian Open Source projects by channelizing beach and volunteer time of ThoughtWorkers. Gurpreet & Deepali from the HSP team at ThoughtWorks work full-time in connecting ThoughtWorkers to Open Source projects adopted under the HSP Program.

(From left to right Gurpreet, Khushal, Deepali, Sailee, Priti)

We like to focus in on our Specialists every once a while, recognizing their contributions and providing a more personal glimpse into their organization and team. This time around we’re taking a closer look at SolDevelo. SolDevelo has been playing a crucial role as the technical stewards of the Mifos 2.0 codebase. Head over to the COSM blog to read about each member of the team and what their plans are for Mifos in 2013 including continued expansion of their hosted service, MifCloud.

Read the Specialist Spotlight on SolDevelo.

Another one of the markets where Mifos has gone untouched is Laos.  FINA in coordination with the Microfinance Center of Laos is setting out to change that.  As of the Mifos 2.3 release, the software has been fully translated into Lao by FinA and MFC. Localizing Mifos into Lao is only one of the barriers that must be overcome. Kakhaber and his team are working to address the gaps to support the various forms of microfinance practiced by the MFIs, village banks, projects, and associations throughout Lao.  FINA is strongly committed to providing this region access to open source software and open access to financing resources for the poor.

To promote Mifos and help MFIs learn about the services available to them, the Mifos Lao language website has been launched at http://lao.mifos.biz. The website was designed by FINA and translated into Lao by MFC. Please visit the Mifos Lao portal for a tailored experience to learn about how FINA can support your Mifos needs in Laos.

Latin America is home to one of the most vibrant and mature microfinance sectors in the world. Many MFIs could benefit from our technology and we could learn from the many pioneering MFIs throughout the region. Unfortunately because of language barriers in both our documentation and virtual community collaboration, the Mifos presence in Latin America has been limited to date. That is beginning to change as Quipu Technology and other service providers expand throughout the region.

Quipu Technology recently went live with the first Mifos deployment in Latin America at Fundación Inversión y Cooperación.  Under the umbrella of “Qloud Inclusion” concept for an “Integral Vision of Microfinance for Social Inclusion”, Mr. Oswaldo Lechuga, General Manager of Quipu, is looking to expand across Peru and deliver technology and consulting services throughout Latin America – we’ll detail their plans in a future post with more on Quipu Technology. Oswaldo Lechuga and Milagros Mendoza recounted their experiences deploying Mifos at Fundación I y C in the questions below.

This month we want to bring attention to the strong work that Hugo Technologies is doing in the Mifos community. They are supporting Mifos customers and building new functionality not only in India but in multiple continents around the world. This post is part of the regular blog series, Specialist Spotlight, on the COSM blog that will shine the light on some of our top Specialists. Not only do we want to recognize them for their accomplishments, we want others to learn from the approach they’ve taken to promote and implement Mifos. Mifos Specialists are one of the most crucial links in our community – they are the driving force that is promoting and supporting Mifos worldwide

Head over to the COSM blog to read about Hugo Technologies and their global push. 

Head over to the COSM blog for this past month’s Outreach on the Ground blog series. For May, we’re featuring stories exploring the theme of product and service development.  MFIs have a myriad ways towards delivering financial services to the poor.  We’d like to share details on the approaches of various Mifos users:

• Housing and Water Purifier Loans at Grameen Koota
• Transitioning to the MwaK program at Nuru
• A Closer Look at Lumana – Rainmakers interview with Sammie Rayner
• Missions of Hope International funding entrepreneurship through coffee

Great news from Mozambique as we have another Mifos deployment live and another Mifos user to welcome to the community.  Miguel and Natu from Iniciativa Mifos Moçambique just finished implementing Mifos at Profamilia Moçambique.  Miguel is leading efforts to promote and distribute Mifos all throughout Southern Africa – his team has successfully brought the Mifos technology to Associação Progresso in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique and to Kongalend Financial Services in Namibia. Beyond Mozambique, their team is seeking out additional Mifos users to add to the community in Zambia and Cape Verde.

Profamilia Moçambique’s microfinance operations serve the province of Inhambane, benefiting the populations of the districts of Inhambane, Zavala, Inharime, Morrumbene through the provision of more inclusive financial services. They target their solidarity group loans at low income customers, particularly women.

We want to take the chance to highlight one of the top contributors to our community, SolDevelo, based in Gdynia, Poland. They are a telling example that no matter where you are located in the world, you can play your part towards creating a world of 3 Billion Maries.

Finding talented Java developers is always a challenge, especially given the complex business requirements that Mifos supports. Yet our team is always impressed that whatever project we send to SolDevelo, they quickly and thoroughly deliver a solution of superb quality.  Their nimble team is always up to the challenge, ready and willing to work on new features, fixing bugs, building reports, quality assurance – whatever our users need for a better product. Many thanks to Jakub for writing this post to highlight his team and the work they’ve done on the Mifos project.

The Iniciativa Mifos^® Moçambique team recently concluded a trip out to Windhoek, Namibia, kicking off Mifos deployment with the team at Kongalend Financial Services. 

Earlier this year, I got several emails from Semba Funda, the IT manager, at Kongalend Financial Services in Namibia. Semba had expressed a strong desire to use Mifos but was in need of a local expert to help them get the full benefits of Mifos.  Kongalend is a Namibian microfinance instutition based in Windhoek providing credit and power loan products to those with limited or no access to financial services. They were looking to streamline their operations and have greater control over what their software could do for their business. Their existing system, LendMaster, had very limited support and was impeding day to day operations; they were confident Mifos was the solution for them. With the Iniciativa Mifos^® Moçambique team at their side, they’re now ready for a Mifos solution that will allow sustainable growth for the microcredit activities and expansion to several Namibian regions.

Our roadshow was intended to showcase the functionalities of Mifos to MFIs in northern India. We chose to start with Utter Pradesh (North India state) because of its highly dense population plagued by gender inequality and poverty with more than 40% living below the poverty line. Most of the MFIs are lagging in adopting technology compared to their counterparts in South India.