Allison Lynn Bridges, New York University
“Human Development Through Islamic Microfinanace”
Bio: While finishing her M.A. in International Affairs at New School University in New York, Allison was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to work with local Islamic NGOs that sponsor microfinance projects taking in the poorest neighborhoods of Jakarta, Indonesia. The research was primarily concerned with evaluating the relationship between civil society development and economic development. This evaluation of the identifiable social benefits of microfinance drew on a previous internship in which she documented women’s saving and credit groups in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra as they lobbied local governments to improve public health services. Allison has also held positions with The Carter Center monitoring the 2004 presidential elections in Indonesia, with the World Health Organization in Aceh and Jakarta to assist with ongoing humanitarian crisis response activities, and with the World Bank working on energy policy and urban development. She is now back in school working on a multidisciplinary M.A. degree at New York University focusing specifically on urban development policy and planning.
Abstract: A country with 219 million people, Indonesia continues to struggle with the challenges of a fledgling democracy, national unity, and security. Though Indonesia saw a decline in poverty by 65.3 million people between the years 1970 and 1995, 17.7 percents still lived below the national poverty line in 2006. Research conducted by the author as a Fulbright scholar from Fall 2004 until Spring 2005 leveraged ethnographic inquiry in the evaluation of Islamic NGOs that seek to develop civil society through micro-credit programs. The positive contribution to the development of skills needed to enhance productive political and economic social engagement among low-income communities was explored through both informal focus groups and structured surveys. The social impact of urban economic and community empowerment models introduced by the NGOs, or Lembaga Amil Zakat (LAZ) licensed to collect and distribute Islamic charitable donations in Indonesia, was investigated in three distinct ways: (1) the disenfranchisement of low income households from traditional civil society; (2) the mobilization of zakāt, waqf, and infaq/sadaqa by LAZ; and (3) the impact of the work of the organization on the lives of the beneficiaries. The following three areas were identified in which a social impact resulted directly from the work of the NGOs: feelings of trust and obligation, information flows and democratic socialization, and ethical economic orientations.
