With support of the Ford Foundation and in partnership with Grameen Foundation India (GFI) and Grameen Capital India, Grameen Foundation USA is leading the 18-month Women’s Economic Empowerment in India program to catalyze women’s financial inclusion and entrepreneurship in rural India.
January 02, 2020 by HABI Education Lab, Grameen Foundation content partner
In 2015, Grameen Foundation launched the Community Agent Network (CAN). Its goal was to improve the resilience of the financially unserved and underserved by building a last-mile network of Grameen Community Agents in micro and small neighborhood shops to provide digital financial services (DFS) to their neighbors in remote villages in the Philippines.
Low-income women equipped with new technology are driving change in financial access and gender roles in India and the Philippines. Women-based networks of community finance workers, organized by Grameen Foundation, have brought financial services to nearly 1.3 million people through hundreds of newly trained community finance workers.
From vision and strategy to end results, view this snapshot of the WomenLink project and how it has helped to expand financial inclusion of poor and low-income women in the Philippines.
WomenLink Phase 1 pilot tested a digital literacy and financial education program based on SMS (short message system). Messages delivered to women’s phones were designed to deliver simple but actionable information to deepen women’s understanding of Digital Financial Services in an effort to galvanize uptake by new customers and drive greater usage by current ones.
March 07, 2019
That morning ritual loved by millions, a simple cup of coffee, may one day be a thing of the past. New research shows that 60% of the world’s 124 species of wild coffee face a mounting threat of extinction, mostly as a result of deforestation. This potential loss of genetic diversity would, in turn, limit the ways in which coffee could be adapted to a changing climate and disease threats.
Varsha Dhurve has two passions: educating her children and helping other women avoid the hardships she's endured. Both have motivated her in the decade since her husband died.
This paper highlights the research findings from a quasi-experimental evaluation conducted with coconut smallholder farmers and an activity-based costing evaluation conducted with partners of Grameen Foundation’s FarmerLink program that was implemented in the Philippines in collaboration with the Philippine Coconut Authority (government agency), Franklin Baker Company of the Philippines (coconut buyer), and People’s Bank of Caraga (financial services provider). Combining the power of mobile technology and trusted human intermediaries, FarmerLink was conceived with the primary goal of increasing coconut farming households’ incomes by improving productivity, providing access to appropriate financial services, linking farmers directly to markets, and reducing their losses to pests, diseases and weather calamities. Results from the evaluation suggest improved adoption of good agricultural practices among smallholder farmers and cost-savings through digitizing famer support services among the implementing partners.
In 2015, Freedom from Hunger India Trust, Grameen Foundation and RESULTS Educational Fund launched the Maa aur Shishu Swasthya (MASS) (Mother and Child Health) program in India. Integrating the delivery of health education, financial services, and linkages to health care providers, the program reached more than half a million Indian women. Key components were implemented in West Bengal and Jharkhand with financial service partners Aikyatan Development Society (ADS) and Bandhan Konnagar. This comprehensive report highlights the key findings and learnings, and contains links to related resources developed by the program’s Community of Practice for Health and Microfinance (COPHAM).
This report shows how integration between the robust, pro-poor microfinance sector and the health sector can drive progress on two of the factors most critical to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in India: 1) ensuring the poorest and most vulnerable households are effectively reached, enrolled and actively use the coverage and 2) public, private or civil society actors delivering support services that fill the gaps in services and financing.