The European Microfinance Network is looking to hire an evaluation consultancy agency/service or independent consultant to conduct an external and independent final evaluation of the project “Supporting the resilience of MFIs and their clients: Technical Assistance in response to COVID-19 crisis”.
This public consultation aims to inform the ex post evaluation of the Employment and Social Innovation Programme (EaSI) and the final evaluation of the European Progress Microfinance Facility (EPMF). The evaluation shall cover the five evaluation criteria — relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and EU added-value — as endorsed by the Better Regulation Guidelines.
Social enterprise finance providers can now apply for technical assistance services under the Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) programme
To build the emerging European social enterprise finance sector and to facilitate access to EaSI financial instruments, the European Commission is extending the scope for the provision of EaSI technical assistance - which previously focused only on microcredit providers - to cover also the needs of social enterprise finance providers.
The present call for applications lays down the detailed specifications to apply for Bilateral Cooperation Initiatives.
The EaSI Guarantee Instrument is funded from the EaSI Programme and is specifically dedicated to microfinance and social entrepreneurship. One of its key objectives is to increase the availability of and access to finance for vulnerable groups wishing to launch their own enterprises, micro-enterprises and social enterprises, both in their start-up and development phases.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Commission recently announced a new initiative to help micro-credit and social enterprise finance providers develop their businesses under the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI).
The objective of this instrument is to build up the institutional capacity of selected financial intermediaries that have not yet reached sustainability or are in need of risk capital to sustain their growth and development.
As part of the policy response to address the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, certain measures are made available to Financial Intermediaries to provide dedicated support to micro-borrowers, microenterprises and social enterprises. These Support Measures enhance the availability of finance to EaSI target final recipients. The COVID-19 Support Measures shall consist, in principle, of an increase in the risk taking capacity of EaSI Guarantee through the amendment of certain terms of the instrument.