Name: Stuart Edward RUTHERFORD, MA (Cantab), AA Dipl, RIBA

Born: London, UK, 7th July 1943

Nationality: British

An independent researcher and consultant in financial services for the poor, especially in south and south-east Asia, Stuart Rutherford has lived in Bangladesh since late 1984. He concentrates on imagining and field-testing innovative financial services schemes for the very poor in the countryside and in the towns. He also writes, helps local NGOs to develop financial services schemes, and provides consultancy services to a wide range of clients.

As a practitioner: Stuart Rutherford is the founder and Chairman of SafeSave, a financial services Co-operative which pioneers ultra-flexible savings and loans services for urban and rural poor in Bangladesh. He helped a Co-operative Bank replicate an earlier version of the SafeSave model and that scheme now has over 30,000 accounts. He is also a Board Member of ASA, a Bangladeshi NGO which is the world’s fastest growing and most cost-effective microfinance institution for the poor. He runs Binimoy, a not-for-profit venture which promotes innovation in financial services for the poor and develops products.

As a writer: In late 1995 Stuart Rutherford published the first full-length book which examines NGO involvement in micro-finance in Bangladesh from an historical and critical perspective. He has also published two medium-length works on user-owned financial services, (commissioned and published by DFID [official British aid] and ActionAid) and has contributed articles to academic journals. He is a Visiting Research Fellow of the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester, UK.

As a consultant: Stuart Rutherford has carried out field-work commissions, including research studies, product design, and programme evaluations, for many clients including DFID, ADB, EU and many NGOs including Oxfam, CARE, Save the Children, ASA, Proshika, and ActionAid. He first came to Bangladesh as Country Director (1984-1990) of ActionAid's development programme in Bangladesh, where he devised and executed a system of offering savings and credit facilities to over 20,000 landless families in a remote southern District of the country, and set up the first-ever urban replication of the Grameen system. The programme was supported by funds from several major donors. He is also working as Advisor to ActionAid's Vietnam programme, where he has developed a savings and loan bank for poor communities of indigenous people in the northern mountain areas.

Stuart Rutherford has a first class degree from Cambridge University (1966), and is also a qualified architect. He speaks good Bengali, and is in good health.

Education:

Academic status:

Member, European Network of Bangladesh Studies

Employment:

• field research, programme review, product design and staff training consultancy for this tiny new but innovative microfinance institute run entirely by women.

• field research, programme review, product design and staff training consultancy for CECAP, an EU project in northern Luzon Island.

• preparation of background material for a new Oxfam/ActionAid book: material now published separately as a booklet by ActionAid with the name A typology of financial services for the poor

• preparation of a book on the history and future of ASA, an NGO on course to become one of the biggest credit-giving bodies in the country: ‘ASA, the biography of an NGO: Empowerment and Credit in Rural Bangladesh’, Dhaka, September 1995.

• BankPoor ’96 is an initiative of APDC (Asian Pacific Development Council). As an editorial board member I shared responsibility for a series of assessments of micro-finance in fifteen Asian and Pacific states, and for the preparation and execution of the BankPoor ’96 Workshop in Kuala Lumpur in December 1996

• Mid-term evaluation of the NGO ‘BURO Tangail’, an NGO which has developed a market-oriented version of the Grameen Bank micro-finance delivery model. Appraisal of BURO’s application to DFID, July 1996.

• Mid-term evaluation of ‘Faulu Kenya’, an NGO working with poor entrepreneurs in the Nairobi slums.

• Examination of the group dynamics of savings groups formed by Proshika, a major NGO partner of DFID in Bangladesh

• further review of the ‘Commune Bank’ developed for ActionAid (AAV) in northern Vietnam. Appraisal of a second operational area for AAV in Central Vietnam.
• publication: ‘Five Savings Group Case Studies’, ActionAid Vietnam

• workshops designed to help activists plan and execute better financial services for the poor

· visited DFID-aided cities and reviewed the work of potential partner-NGOs in the field of savings and credit

· publications: 'SIPs, NGOs and Financial Services’, November 1994; ‘Self-Help Savings and Loan groups: Cuttack, Vijayawada and Calcutta’, August 1995; ‘Almirahs full of passbooks: financial services in Cochin’, February 1996; ‘Save your money, take your choice: financial services in Indore and Vijayawada’, July 1996, and City Savers (see above)

• short research consultancy to discover how poorer farmers cope with the conversion of paddy land to sweet-water prawn farming in northern Bagerhat.
• publication: ‘CARE and gher: Financing the small fry’, BAFRU/CARE, Dhaka

• free consultancy for this interesting local NGO that has concentrated on ‘social mobilisation’ and now wants to satisfy its group members’ demand for credit: short appraisal of their savings work, December 1995

· Reviewed the 'village bank' developed for ActionAid in northern Vietnam. Assisted Oxfam and SCF(UK) run a workshop on savings and credit for local NGO staff.

· devised and ran a workshop to help Slum Improvement Project Officers from seven assisted cities to plan savings and credit activities

            · publication: 'Workshop on Thrift and Credit: Workshop Document', DFID Delhi

• Research focuses on imagining and testing better ways of organising financial services for poor people: in collaboration with local and international NGOs. Output is aimed at local NGOs.
• With Federal Savings, a small co-operative bank, set up a ‘Money Management Centre’ for the urban poor in Dhaka, in late 1995. Project is running well.
• Privately funded a smaller NGO to experiment with radical alternatives to the Grameen Bank for indigenous people in Bangladesh’s arid Barind Tract.

· an IDSS contract with the ADB to provide technical assistance to the Government of Bangladesh to develop a credit delivery scheme for the rural poor based on Grameen Bank methodology

· publication: 'Alternative Credit Delivery Systems, Bangladesh', IDSS, ADB and Government of Bangladesh

· evaluated SCF's Credit and Savings scheme in north-central Bangladesh

· publication: 'Work in Progress' (SCF-UK Bangladesh, 1993)

· developed, with the Womens Union of Vietnam, a 'village bank' for offering savings-based credit services to very poor villagers in the northern hilly areas

· the scheme is now running and early reports are encouraging

· collaborating with several NGOs in Bangladesh to develop ways of bringing financial services to those too poor to benefit from current NGO and Grameen Bank schemes

· publications: in preparation

1991-1992:

Freelance Consultant, Private Researcher, and part-time Advisor to ActionAid

Advisor, ActionAid Bangladesh, September 1990 to December 1992

· a part-time post (seven months a year) advising ActionAid on the development of its programmes in Bangladesh, especially rural financial services in Bhola District (see below for more details)

· publications: numerous, including 'AfterWords - ActionAid in Bangladesh 1984-1992'

· advising this new ActionAid country programme on how to assess the potential for financial services in a poor mountainous district of northern Vietnam

· publication: 'A Peasant Economy Readjusts', ActionAid Vietnam 1992

· reviewed this major UK NGO's experiences in rural savings and credit in Bangladesh during the period 1974-1992.

· publication: 'Learning to Lend', Save the Children (UK) Working Paper No 5, London, 1993

· member of a three-person Team assessing World Vision's use of an DFID grant for rehabilitation following the April 1991 cyclone

· publication: 'The Cyclone of 1991: Some Thoughts on Relief and Rehabilitation, Coping, and NGOs' (with Richard Palmer-Jones), PACT/Community Library, Dhaka, 1992

· responsible for designing and carrying out field research into the performance of the Grameen Bank as part of SDC's project on 'Poverty Alleviation and Participation in Bangladesh'. With Prof George d'Souza, University of Geneva

· publication: pending

· HelpAge International are introducing the concept of financial services for the elderly to a number of NGOs in Bangladesh: my role has been to advise the NGOs

· publications: various field reports available

1984-1990:

Full-time employment

· designed and executed ActionAid's programme in Bangladesh, including the recruitment and training of a staff of 200+

· the programme's main location is in southern Bhola Island, a remote cyclone-prone undeveloped area

· we successfully adopted, adapted and extended the Grameen Bank's approach to serve 20,000 landless households with a range of financial services

· £1.5m (US$2.25m) was lent in almost 100,000 separate micro-loans and achieved a repayment rate of 96% repaid on the due day.

· the programme also sank over 1,000 deep domestic water tubewells (average depth 280 metres), set up an immunisation service for the area, supported schools and responded to the cyclones of May 1985, October 1987 and April 1991.

· finance came from public and private sources: public sources included DFID, CIDA and DANIDA (British, Canadian and Danish official aid) and UNICEF.

· publications: numerous reports

· evaluations: 'Group Formation and Savings and Credit' by Dr Ruth Alsop (University of East Anglia),published by ActionAid, London 1991, and 'Evaluating the Impact of NGOs in Rural Poverty Alleviation' by Dr Sarah C White, Overseas Development Institute Working Paper 50, London 1991

1981-1984:

Freelance consultant and private architect

· during this period I was in practice as an architect (Michael Watts Associates: see below)

· I also carried out occasional overseas consultancies, for example in Somalia in 1981 in connection with refugee work, Rwanda in 1982 to advise on school construction, and The Gambia in 1982 to advise on locations for a film made by ActionAid about its work in the country

1978-1981:

Advisor to ActionAid in Africa

· from July 1978 to November 1979 I was resident in Burundi advising ActionAid on the development of participatory methods of work with village groups involved in education and nutrition

· from December 1979 to March 1981 I lived in The Gambia as Community Development Advisor to this new ActionAid programme, developing participatory methods of work in credit, schooling, and water supply.

1976-1978:

Private Architect, Michael Watts Associates, London

· set up a four-person Architectural Partnership in London, working mainly for private clients in the City of London and elsewhere in southern Britain.

· I remain a 'sleeping' partner and retain my registration as an Architect

1970-1976:

Architectural student and consultant

· enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Britain's leading architectural college, and became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1976

· during 1973-74 I took a year out and worked as a consultant in Latin America

Principal Investigator, Centro de Assessoramiento at INCAE, Managua, Nicaragua, early 1974

· INCAE (Instituto Centroamericano de Administracion de Empresas) is the Latin-American campus of the Harvard Business School. I was employed by its 'consultancy center' to head an investigation into the impact on the poor of the earthquake which devastated Managua in December 1972

· publication: Study Report, INCAE, 1974

· responsible for producing designs for low-cost housing for this engineering firm with contracts from the Mexican government

1966-1970:

College and University Teacher

· teaching the history of architecture to graduates and undergraduates: the University of Delaware is one of the leading colleges in the USA for the History of Art and Architecture

· teaching the history of art and architecture to undergraduates

· teaching the history of architecture to Diploma of Art and Design students at this leading UK Art College