Today, global emphasis has shifted to the systematic reporting on the progress microfinance institutions are making towards achieving their social goals. AMFIU has continued to build the capacity of member MFIs to track their social impact through using the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) tool. The PPI is a poverty measurement tool that enables organizations with a mission to serve the poor to manage their social performance with as much purpose and structure as they manage other aspects of their performance. The PPI enables organizations working with the poor to measure and analyze clients’ poverty levels in real-time. It contains 10 questions about a household’s characteristics and asset ownership which are scored to compute the likelihood that the household is living below the poverty line. The PPI for Uganda was created in June 2015 with indicators based on data from the 2012/13 National Household Survey (UNHS) conducted by Uganda Bureau of Statistics. The tool helps in identifying the clients, customers, or employees who are most likely to be poor or vulnerable to poverty, integrating objective poverty data into their assessments for strategic decision-making.

The training was attended by participants from various institutions from across the country with a purpose to enable them achieve their Social Performance Management goals. The training was planned and guided in part by the feedback received by AMFIU on the expertise and knowledge of the PPI from the MFI teams. From the feedback, it was noted that some MFIs had adopted the PPI and had some knowledge, but there was need for more trainings in PPI for them to effectively integrate it into the Social Performance agenda. The participants were engaged in Role Play on the PPI to get a feel of the PPI questions for Uganda, and had hands-on experience of carrying out the PPI during a field test in Busabala and Massaja organised by Five Talents Microfinance, and interpretation of the PPI indicators through practical data analysis after the field test.

The field test included interviewing randomly selected clients of Five Talents, a local microfinance institution using the PPI in order to give the MFI staff experience on using the PPI in a real life situation. The data collected is used for Data Analysis practice with a focus on using the excel value look up formula and new data intake tool to get PPI scores and poverty rates and likelihoods. In their feedback the participants described the training as a “rewarding experience” as it helped to enlighten them more about the PPI and also got them thinking about the numerous ways the PPI could be implemented in their projects.