The 14th MFC Annual Conference/14-ая Ежегодная конференция МФЦ had been held from May 18th to 20th at the Corinthia Hotel Prague. This bilingual conference was under the leadership of Grzegorz Galusek, Executive Director of the Microfinance Centre. The main theme of the conference was “Reorienting microfinance towards balanced growth”. The pleriminary question was whether to create a new concept of microfinance or make changes to the current system. After the keynote presentation, there were 3 plenary sessions as well as 16 lectures and workshops during the 3-day long conference. The conference had also implemented specific technical support. In each hall, two screens were available to participants, where the presentations simultaneously ran in both English and Russian and for the Opening Plenary Session 4 screens had been used.

The conference was attended by more than 400 participants, mostly from Central Asia, Europe and the USA.

The social event was unconventionally held at an unusual venue in the Ecotechnical Museum in Prague. Part of the evening’s programme was a tour of the underground area of the former sewage treatment plant that had been there prior, and was accompanied by guides wearing hooded cloaks and thousands of glowing candles. Another interesting part of the evening was a karaoke machine with Russian hits. Even the DJ enticed the participants so much with his music selections during the evening that after the end of the event, two crowded buses full of participants departed to the Karlovy Lázně music club.

The event had been really successful and during his closing speech, the director mentioned the possibility of continued cooperation over the upcoming years. Hopefully, the next conference will once again be organised by our company in an unspecified destination to date.