Proceedings of the International Conference, Integrated Microfinance Management for Sustainable Community Development (IMM 2016)

The International Conference of Integrated Microfinance Management (ICIMM) for sustainable community development was held for the first time at 19 – 22 September 2016 in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The theme for this first conference was “an alternative approach to the provision of financial and non-financial services to the poor”, and was attended by around 175 people consisting of policy makers, government officials, academicians, and practitioners, and around 30 paper presenters, out of 50 abstracts submitted.

The papers presented revolve around the concept of integrated microfinance management (IMM), which emphasize on the importance of viewing microfinance not just from its financial aspect, but also from other equally important factors, e.g. health, education, culture and local wisdom – an answer to the critics on the more commercial form of microfinance. The conference has successfully promoted the IMM concept and collected the practice of IMM concept from around the world. The conference was held by a joint collaboration between the Faculty of Economics, Universitas Padjadjaran (UNPAD), Indonesia and the Leiden Ethnosystems and Development (LEAD) Programme of Leiden University, the Netherlands, sponsored and supported by Bank BJB, PT. LEN Industry, Bank BNI, the Financial Services Authority (OJK), Bank of Indonesia, and our media partner Pikiran Rakyat.

Of the papers submitted and presented, the scientific committee have chosen the following papers to be further shared to wider audience through this conference proceeding as it contains various case studies, methods, and proposed ideas for further studies. At least two members of scientific committee were assigned to review each of the papers and made revisions if necessary.

We hope this collection of papers will further enlighten readers to the concept of IMM and the richness of related research and case studies. More importantly, we hope this proceeding will inspire readers to apply the IMM approach to a wider settings, conduct more similar studies, and unravel the existing potentials of the communities and local wisdoms to be integrated with microfinance to successfully alleviate poverty.