Advanced Curriculum Development for Integrated Microfinance Management

In 2009, the Leiden Ethnosystems and Development Programme (LEAD) of the Faculty of Science of Leiden University in The Netherlands initiated the establishment of a new Master Course on Integrated Microfinance Management (IMM) in collaboration with the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) of Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (CIHEAM-MAICh), which has been supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Hague, The Netherlands (INDEV). The objective of the IMM Master Course is to educate and train a new cadre of community managers, skilled to promote, implement and manage policies and programmes on poverty reduction and empowerment in the community by integrating local and global knowledge and institutions in a local framework in order to provide micro-financial and non-financial services such as health services, education, communication, as well as socio-cultural services to the local population in the country. The new IMM Master Course has been established in Universitas Padjadjaran since 2012, using a multidisciplinary approach through a combination of theoretical teaching, seminars and workshops, practical fieldwork or vocational training, and writing a Master thesis. Since the establishment of the Master Course, the graduates have been working in various settings of institutions and organisations—both private and public—in service to the local communities. The successful contribution of the newly trained Integrated Microfinance Managers to sustainable community development has not only pertained to the current consideration to extend the IMM Master Course into a nationwide programme throughout Indonesia, but also motivated the present development of the concept of Integrated Community-Managed Development to implement the participatory ‘bottom-up’ approach development, and as such contribute to the realisation of the Post-2015 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (2015a).