Helping Communities Manage risks from the ground up.

The Rockefeller Foundation (USA) has recently decided to provide funding support to Erasmus University Rotterdam / Erasmus MC (EUR/MC) in partnership with MIA and other partners to introduce microinsurance to resource-poor communities in Nepal. 

This enlarged circle of partners has been based on a consortium created in July 2008 by MIA and Save the Children (USA) to introduce microinsurance to resource-poor communities in Nepal. In addition to the funding support received from the Rockefeller Foundation, another donor that requested to remain anonymous also contributed funds. 

The aim of the MIA-Save consortium is to provide financial protection to resource poor communities through the access to health, life, property, and other forms of insurance. The consortium unanimously agreed to support the project and began assigning tasks for moving forward. The first joint activity has been to jointly conduct a workshop with local NGOs on community based micro insurance (Kathmandu, July 14-16 2008). At the end of that workshop, a Declaration of Understanding was signed by all NGOs that participated, affirming their commitment to launch and scale up community-based microinsurance schemes following the mutual model. However, next steps had to wait until funds could be secured. 

With the recently concluded support of EUR/MC and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as the anonymous donor to Save the Children, our consortium will conduct the indispensable baseline study (including HH survey, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and analysis of the household survey information). The results will allow us to provide evidence-based information underlying the provision of micro health insurance (e.g. Incidence of illness, cost of treatment, premiums, insurance product design, etc). When this preparatory phase is completed, implementation of insurance could begin.

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