Integration of Waqf – Islamic Mircrofinance Model for Poverty Reduction: The Case of Bangladesh

Conventional Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) were established essentially to alleviate poverty. Despite their operations for more than four decades, the problems of poverty continue to aggravate. MFIs have been constrained by high cost of fund, high interest rate charge and poor human resource quality of the recipients. Islamic MFIs have recently evolved with the hope of overcoming these financial, ethical and human capital deficiencies faced by the conventional finance. Moreover, a good number of integrated models have been proposed to enhance the role Islamic MFIs. Most of these models however lack empirical justifications. The present paper has developed an integrated Waqf-Microfinance Model (IWMM) and conducted a survey in Bangladesh to validate the model by gauging the perception of Microfinance clients. A total of 381 respondents were included in the survey. There are six constructs presenting the IWMM, namely Waqf Resources, Islamic MF, Takaful, Project Financing, Human Resour