Announcements:
MIA's new website
On its 3rd anniversary, MIA is launching a new version of its website. The new website has a fresh and dynamic look, easier navigation, many additional resources on microinsurance and insurance education, a refurbished news and media section, as well as new capabilities to follow regular updates on ongoing projects. Please browse www.microinsuranceacademy.org to enjoy the new features and see it all.
Featured publications
MIA team members authored two papers that have been published recently in Morelli E, Onnis GA, Ammann WJ, Sutter C (ed): Microinsurance: an Innovative Tool for Disaster and Risk Reduction. Published by Global Risk Forum (GRF), Davos;
'Integrated Risk Management in Microinsurance', Radermacher R, Roberts Singh J, Srivastava S., pp 7-38
Microinsurance can be a tool in Disaster Risk Reduction/Management – but only if it survives the disaster itself. Reinsurance can help microinsurance to survive disasters. However, reinsurers regard the microinsurance entity a risky client and are hesitant to engage in this market. An Integrated Risk Management approach can help a microinsurer to become a better client for reinsurance and thus to obtain reinsurance cheaper...[read more].
'Voluntary Affiliation to Micro Health Insurance an Social Capital among Resource-Poor Persons: Initial Evidence from India', Iddo Dror, pp 187-210
Based on data from a 2005 household survey in four locations in India, this paper examines whether there is an association between insurance status and several indicators of social capital, and whether this association is a general phenomenon or, rather, dependent on attributes of the community or of the local MIU...[read more].
Featured Video
Watch the trailer of “SAB TUJHSE HAI” ('It depends on you'), the brand new full-blown Bollywood movie on microinsurance produced and directed by the MIA.
Careers at the MIA
The MIA is looking to hire the following profiles:
[Current Openings]
-
Education Specialist (1 Position)
-
Director of Implementation (1 position
-
Supervision & Regulation Expert (1 Position)
-
Training Specialist (Nepali) (1 Position)
-
Training Specialist (Khasi) (1 Position)
Please visit our Jobs page for detailed Job descriptions. The MIA is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
News from Partners:
The Microinsurance network launches the Microinsurance Technology Inventory website.
The Microinsurance Network Technology Working Group launched the first online microinsurance technology inventory which both centralises and reviews software systems that can be used for microinsurance. Funded by the Inter-American Development Bank MIF-Fomin, the ILO’s Microinsurance Innovation Facility and the Microinsurance Network, the objective of the microinsurance technology inventory is to provide the microinsurance community with an overview of technologies that can be used for the administration of insurance products for the low-income population.
Diploma Course in International Health and Policy Evaluation
This course is organized jointly by the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), the institute of Health Policy and Management (iBMG) and the Department of Public Health (MGZ). The aim is to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on population health and health services in low- and middle-income countries. The programme is designed to equip professionals and researchers with essential training to support rational decision-making and sustainable improvements in population health. More information can be found on the course website www.internationalhealthcourse.nl.
Reset
A New platform for sustainability launched in India!
Reset.to, a non-profit organisation which started in 2007 with its first project, the sustainability platform, has set up an Indian portal at http://in.reset.to/ - read more about this interesting platform (and how you can get involved) here and learn how you can:
Masters in Public Health
James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
-
Great learning opportunity taught through intensive courses in bi-monthly modules
-
Residential one year course
-
Teachers from Harvard, Columbia, Hopkins, George
-
Washington, London, Amsterdam and Upsala
Apply by September 15 2010
Interviews by October 15 2010
Results by 15 November 2010
Courses begin 15 January 2011
Graduate 15 January 2012
|
In this Issue:
As this issue of Micro Insurance Voices goes to print, the Micro Insurance Academy is celebrating its 3rd anniversary. This issue includes some exciting news items, such as details on the release of the MIA-produced first full-length Bollywood movie on microinsurance, a short briefing note on MIA's recent work in Tanzania, and much more news on our work at grassroots level in South Asia.
Editorial - 3 years of MIA
 It is thanks to a team's commitment that MIA can claim to have done more than we set out to do to realize a vision of suitable institutional support for microinsurance schemes. We view our mission - helping communities manage risks from the ground up – as covering the entire process through which resource-poor communities are empowered to face financial risk, together. The process typically starts with initiating the activity and awareness building, on to involving communities in critical decisions of the risks that would be managed through insurance, and culminating with training and other activities to build a suitable “ground structure” that will be engaged in implementing insurance.
Structuring this business process of community-based (health) insurance has required developing training tools, and has been backed by insights we gained from rigorous scientific research on some very practical issues underlying pro-poor insurance. On this day, MIA wishes to put on record its huge gratitude to our growing number of field partners, colleagues in the development sector (including those that follow different trajectories than ours) and our research partners and funders. All that we boast today reflects collaborative efforts with other partners, sharing our conviction that community-based insurance starts and ends with making an impact with real people at the community level.
More than ever, we are convinced that communities have a unique and irreplaceable role to play in facing financial risks. For this reason, we have refined a process which reflects the importance of community mobilisation at three steps: in the transfer of knowledge about insurance, in the option of informed choice about interventions (e.g. the option to say no) and in the building of skills necessary to run micro insurance schemes. Communication gaps have been tapped, and misconceptions addressed in creative, engaging and empowering ways. Communities are not merely “aggregators”; they have a legitimate need to understand the options, before making informed, shared decisions on risks and risk-management. Let nobody say that communities of illiterate and innumerate persons cannot understand; they can and want to, because they then have to endure the consequences of choices made. Lastly, communities need to run their scheme, in order to guarantee maximum transparency and ownership of interventions – in other words, a recipe for impact and sustainability.
We believe that only by supporting a process built on explanations, choices, and true empowerment of groups– rather than offering a standard product - can low-income households successfully access financial protection. The “market” alone cannot offer ready-made solutions for the base of the pyramid, when neither governments nor for-profit enterprises have committed sufficient resources to rise to the huge challenges at hand.
In three years, the MIA has developed a number of original tools, mapped and refined processes and gathered new knowledge in support of community-based micro insurance interventions: these include innovative approaches to insurance education (like producing a Bollywood “infotainment” on microinsurance - read more on this activity in this issue of Voices) to game-like tools to guide the decision-making of the innumerate and illiterate prospective clients, like CHAT®, and innovative research activities on impact assessment, insurance education, supervision and regulation and other topics. We have expanded our focus from health risks to health, livestock and life, we developed an MIS for microinsurance units and integrated risk management approached which link re-insurance to microinsurance. We are proud to have reached, and learned from, more than a dozen districts in 5 Indian states, and Nepal, as well as other locations in the South East and East Asia, the Pacific and now East Africa.
With more than 40 full-time professional staff, fully dedicated to developing sustainable and effective approaches to micro insurance, MIA is proud to be today a leading actor in the microinsurance space worldwide. We have built a solid network of partners at the local, regional and international levels, in South Asia and much beyond. The common cause that all share is to improve knowledge and other support aimed at helping communities manage risks, from the ground up.
SAB TUJHSE HAI – Bollywood meets microinsurance
One of the findings from a landscape study on insurance education lead by the MIA earlier this year (as part of its work in the Micro Insurance Network), was that microinsurance education needs to graduate towards more complex and engaging tools, such as films.
 The MIA has, since inception, been striving to make insurance education more accessible to resource-poor communities, and as part of our ongoing efforts to push the envelope of insurance education tools available in the sector, in 2007 we floated the idea of a Bollywood full-feature film on microinsurance. With funding secured from the European Commission in 2009, earlier this year our team set out to execute this project (read more in the “ may we introduce” section of this newsletter).
On its third anniversary, the MIA is proud to announce that this mission has been accomplished! Sab Tujhse Hai – literally 'everything depends on you' – is now ready for release, and will be coming soon to theatres across locations in South Asia. Sab Tujhse Hai tells a story of a village facing problems such migration and village politics, inter-generational conflicts, catastrophic spending among families and impoverishment - familiar issues to the target audience of microinsurance. All of these are darefully woven into the storyline with the classic Bollywood components of a love story, lots of comedy, action, the false promises of a villain and of course songs and dances. Watch the trailer here, and contact us for more information at mia@mia.org.in
Providing health insurance to Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal
The MIA has recently responded to a request of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) - the government in exile of the Tibetan community in India, Nepal and Bhutan under the guidance of HH the Dalai Lama - to design and implement micro health insurance for over 100,000 Tibetan refugees living in India and Nepal.
 The idea underlying this project is to pick both natural and institutional households – e.g. families, monasteries and schools - as the units of affiliation in an innovative risk pooling mechanism which would provide sustainable resources to the network of health centers run by CTA's Department of Heath. The project also includes establishing better links with third-party secondary and tertiary healthcare providers chosen as referral hospitals. Links to the re-insurance industry will also be sought, with the view to re-insuring outlier risks, which would reduce exposure of the new system to extraordinarily expensive situations. Since its foundation in 1982, CTA's Department of Health provides healthcare within a severely limited and unstable international funding environment.
Thus, the reformed Tibetan “Medicare” system should provide free cover for destitute Tibetan refugees (around 10% of the refugee population), as well as high-impact, sustainable and responsive holistic health care coverage to the entire Tibetan population exiled in India and Nepal.
Till now, the MIA and CTA have conducted a number of training of CTA cadres and a feasibility study in 7 locations. Read more about this project here.
News from the field: Orissa
The NIRAMAYA Health Fund, MIA's CBHI implementation in Orissa, has now been running successfully for 7 months. This demonstration case has been set-up, and is run in partnership with the Mahashakti Foundation, a local MFI, and the CBHI targets the members of the women's cooperative 'Bijayinee Anchalika Mahila Samabaya Samiti Ltd' and their household.
MIA and its partners are planning a second phase of enrollment which will include a new awareness campaign, and the introduction of Village Insurance Volu (VIV) to improve the mobilization of the community. The VIVs will work towards raising awareness within the community about the scheme and enrolling the interested members along with their family.
From the field:
 Nena, a 22 year old mother of one and a member of the Bijayinee Cooperative of Mahashakti Foundation, lives in a village in Rampur Block of Kalahandi District, Orissa called Goud Karlakhunta. Nena lives in a single-room tile-roof roadside house with her husband and child. Nena and her family live of agriculture and as in most households in Orissa, she stores provisions of rice, the staple food in the local diet, to secure food for the family at all times.
Faced with gynecological problems, she had to go to the hospital six times and spent Rs. 260 (6$) for tests, plus Rs. 1900 (41$) for three days in the local hospital, and transport for her and her husband. To face these expenses, Nena had to sell three sacks of rice for a total of Rs.1500 (32$) and to borrow Rs. 200 (5$) from her neighbor.
Just a few weeks earlier, Nena paid Rs. 300 (7$) to enroll herself and her family in the Niramaya micro health insurance scheme. Following her hospitalisation, she submitted a claim to a Board member of the women's cooperative. The claim, with a post dated bill, was verified by the Insurance Coordinator, who established that the bill was dated on the day Nena had made the payment, which she could not do on discharge as she did not have enough money to pay all the medicines. With this added information, the Claim Committee of Niramaya approved Nena's claim in full. When she received the reimbursement from Niramaya, Nena said “I didn’t believe I would get my expenditures reimbursed so quickly, otherwise I would have arranged all the missing bills.”
Nena is now pregnant and decided to go through the three pre- and post- natal visits which will entitle her to the maternity card from the Niramaya scheme and a Rs. 500 (11$) cash incentive.
MIA is recruited to improve Health Financing in Tanzania
The MIA was recently subcontracted by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), as part of a 10 year project on Health Promotion and System Strengthening in Tanzania, funded by the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC).
MIA performed a situational analysis on the issues surrounding health financing and public financial management in the project’s 6 districts within the Dodoma region of Tanzania. The project (considered as a pilot to develop solutions that can be scaled up and applied to the rest of the country) has three main components: i) Health Promotion, ii) Health Financing and Public Financial Management, and iii) Drug and Physical Resource Management.
 Health financing remains a high-priority issue. Therefore, the situational analysis performed by MIA began with a comprehensive desk review, followed by three weeks of field work in Dar es Salaam and Dodoma region, during which information and view points were gathered through Key Informant Interviews (KII) from over 100 resource persons, and 7 Focus Group Discussions (FGD) with community members (separately with males and females ).
The aim of situational analysis was to develop a comprehensive and integrated support package that can strengthen the health system and be used at the district and health facility level. The analysis specifically looked at the country's community-based insurance scheme (Community Health Fund), the formal sector insurance scheme (National Health Insurance Fund), and the flow of funds from the two schemes to the health facilities. MIA provided international expertise on these issues and developed potential interventions to be used during project implementation.
A Planning Workshop is planned to be convened on 21st and 22nd September 2010, in Dodoma, with the participation of Some 100 policy makers, multilateral and bilateral contact persons, development workers, and other relevant stakeholders. MIA representatives will also participate with the view to strengthening project design, reaching consensus on the action plan, and contributing to a spirit of collaboration by all concerned.
Advocacy
Since its inception in 2007, the MIA has been working on advocating for stronger and better evidence-based approaches to microinsurance in many for around the world, and within the Micro Insurance Network (where MIA also facilitates the Impact Assessment and the Insurance Education working groups).
The MIA participated in the following international events that have taken place since the last issue of Voices:
-
Dr Iddo Dror, MIA's Director of Operations, talked on 'Educating Low Income Clients on Risk Management and the Benefits of Insurance' at the Microinsurance Summit 2010, Miami, USA on May 26 (organized by Hanson Wade).
-
Prof. David Dror, MIA's Chairman and AIR awardee of the Insurance Personality of the Year for 2010, co-chaired the Global Microinsurance Summit in Paris (June 30 and July 1). His presentation focused on understanding the needs of the micro insurance market. He stressed the importance of creating flexible approaches to meet the composite needs of clients within the limits of their willingness to pay.
-
In a key-note address at the 4th Asian Microinsurance Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (22 July 2010), David Dror flagged the key importance of 'embedded intangibles' like insurance education in developing a market that offers solutions to a population often illiterate and/or innumerate.
May we introduce...MIA's “Movie Makers”
MIA's ongoing commitment to develop new and exciting insurance education tools has recently led it to take an exciting step forward: After having prepared several short movies and videos (all available free of charge on MIA's YouTube Channel), the MIA decided it was ready to commit resources and engage its team to produce, write and direct a full-length Bollywood-style film, with a story that features a strong message on community-based microinsurance.
 The entire movie was filmed on location in villages where MIA is implementing microinsurance, and the MIA team could thus also interact with field partners (in addition to professional actors and technical persons) in this first-of-its-kind “infotainment” that seeks to demystify insurance among the resource-poor rural persons.
At the core of this effort was a team of four MIA staff: Vishal Vardhan (Film Director), assisted by Jamal Siddiqui (Project Manager), Paankhuri Mathur (Flash Animator) and Prasreen Kunnampalli (Training Specialist). We interviewed them collectively to know more about the 'back stage' of the movie as well as their view on the possible impact of this movie.
How did the idea of making a full-length movie on microinsurance came about?
As we gained experience with MIA's work in rural India, we realised that the many misconceptions on how (micro) insurance works called for a more concerted message, that would surpass small and diffuse micro insurance education initiatives. We thought that making a full-length movie would enable MIA to reach large numbers of people in a single screening (for example, an entire cooperative or a village). The credit for this idea also goes to Dr. Iddo Dror (MIA's Director of Operations) and MIA's senior management team, who oversaw this project from inception and put together the team of trainers, managers and film experts to make this happen.
Why did you chose to work on a Bollywood-style movie?
Usually, NGOs use other audio-visual tools to raise awareness at grassroots level, in particular documentaries and short movies. We all know that Bollywood films are incredibly popular genre of entertainment in the sub-continent. We thought that the level of 'masala' a Bollywood-style movie would allow - dances, romantic songs, a bad character, and of course a tragic event and a love story – would be a clever way to convey, in an entertaining way, a strong message about the value proposition of microinsurance, community solidarity and mutuality principles. The Bollywood recipe for a movie engages the audience in a unique way, in India as much as everywhere else in the world, and we thought the message would be clearer. We hope the audiences will show that we were right.
Where was the movie shot? How did you choose locations?
We chose one of the areas where we are implementing a micro health insurance scheme: Rasulabad block in the Kanpur District, Uttar Pradesh State (India). Through our ongoing work with our local partner, Shramik Bharti, we could count on the support and cooperation of the local community. In fact, as you can imagine, the shooting became an event in itself, attracting the masses even before the movie was released!
What do you think will be the audience and distribution of the movie? Where will it be shown?
Beyond its entertainment value, this movie stays primarily a new and important insurance education tool for the MIA and its partners. It will be screened during Awareness Campaigns and in other key social events in all the locations we are currently working in, across India and in Nepal.
We produced the movie at a quality that would allow cinema screenings. We are currently working on a broader distribution strategy. This will also require dubbing into few of the 24 official languages spoken in India. We already have a firm commission to dub into Nepali, and we expect to also dub the film into Oriya very soon, thanks to a generous contribution that will soon be confirmed. Other languages will follow as and when funds permit, including dubbing into English.
Making a movie involves a lot of creativity, organisation, resources and also a lot of unpredictable events. What was the most interesting challenge you faced?
We had to rise to new challenges on a daily basis, so much so that the creative energy spent on writing the songs and the script seemed at times minor compared to the skills we needed to solve problems and procurement issues! Given the location, shooting in the open-air in rural areas produced its own set of very practical problems; for instance, we filmed during April-May, when the weather in Uttar Pradesh is extremely hot (45 degrees on average); we had only very limited supply of filtered water for a crew of 80 people; the supply of electricity to operate all the equipment and lighting was also a constant concern, given the frequent failures of our generators. In another case, we planned to film one scene in Agra, but when we arrived the authorities required us to cancel this plan because of a threat of communal riots in the city on the exact same day... all the crew had to be shifted to another suitable location hundreds of kilometres away within a few hours… The most unexpected interesting challenge occurred on the first day of shooting, when a former local pradhan (politician) and his men irrupted violently on the set on grounds that his permission hadn't been sought. We succeeded to resolve this issue by organizing an impromptu “inauguration” the following day, in which he ritually cut a red ribbon, and we could proceed with the shooting according to plan.
|
