Lessons learnt during the visit

• The importance of advocacy across time:
  We had a comprehensive presentation of Adie’s historical and present advocacy strategy on a national and local level. We understood Adie employs several human resources on this activity as well as some external support (such as pro bono professionals)
  
  We learned that they leverage their advocacy with recurrent and on-time Studies (4-5 each year): in particular Evaluation of a specific program to report and convince funders/donors; Advocacy elements to feed their advocacy officers.
  
  We observed how their advocacy is so highly considered to be one of their three missions. They mainly work on 2 axis:
  1. legislative and regulatory changes to broaden the scope of micro-finance and facilitate Adie’s actions;
  2. legislative and regulatory changes to encourage entrepreneurship.
   
• Green products for microfinance customers (focus on green mobility microcredit):
  We observed in particular the way Adie concentrates its ecological transition with two main actions: finance and support (to clients and employees);
  
  we were impressed by the different financing purposes Adie covers (a part from cars): access to TEE product label/certification, purchase of mobility bike/electric scooter, dietary transition (organic farmers, local products), set-up of a local renewable energy unit, local improvements to reduce energy consumption;
  
  We learned about the importance of involving external organisations for capital injections related to ecological transition: for instance, they mentioned some collaborations they had with Carrefour foundation, Uber Eats, Crit’Air, Dacia, ecc.
  
  We understood it is also very important the cultural background of both clients and loan officers: Adie for example prepares factsheets for both categories and organises training sessions and individual coaching lessons for its loan officers.
   
• New teamwork techniques (world café & case study/possible solutions)
  We loved the opening of the day, by using some flashcards from the game DIXIT. The card game is played in Italy too, but it was new for us to use it at work as an ice-breaker.
  
  We particularly liked the technique used for the co-development session: the idea of a role-play between a client and two consultancy teams was something we never thought of doing in PerMicro. Time management among the 6 stages must be very efficient, as it helps focusing on key elements of every stage.