ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to shed an analytical light on the current impact of Islamic microfinance – with the case of Islamic Saving-Loan and Financing Cooperatives in Indonesia – on poverty alleviation. Hulme classifies three paradigms of impact assessment: the scientific method, the humanities tradition, and participatory learning and action. This classification was derived from the literature to improve the standard of measurement, sampling, and analytical technique. Measuring the impact on poverty alleviation is very complicated mainly because setting up the criteria for measuring it – how an 'absolute' criterion on the poverty line should be sought and how long people should monitor any positive or negative impact on poverty alleviation within a certain time frame – is extremely difficult. The designed structure supports the technique to analyze information resulting in pattern recognition which initially comes to input functions. The utilization of artificial neural networks in research is mostly in the form of multilayers which comprise sets of neurons.
