Publications
Health shocks are the most prominent idiosyncratic shocks and stresses that low-income households face. Demand for health financing support is often higher than any other financial risk management solution, and demand far exceeds the supply. An improved and expanded choice of health financing options is needed to ensure low-income households have financial instruments to anticipate, respond to, and recover from health events without resulting in increased vulnerability and poverty traps. This will require patient and long-term investments from donors, investors, governments, health service actors and the financial services sector and will require thinking about health financing through an ecosystem lens, where demand generation for and supply of health services and health financing should be designed to intersect.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Bobbi Gray, Alison Bardsley, Amelia Kuklewicz, Christian Loupeda
Publication Date: August 16, 2019
Date created: August 17, 2019
The Building the Resilience of Vulnerable Communities in Burkina Faso (BRB) project leveraged women’s savings groups as a platform to provide complementary services in nutrition and agricultural education, access to agricultural extension support, linkages to formal agricultural and micro-business financing, and gender dialogues with the aim of improving household resilience. A mixed-methods, longitudinal quasi-experimental research design implemented between 2016 and 2018 found that BRB participants experienced improved food security, dietary diversity, self-perceived resilience and sustained savings accumulation despite an economic downturn experienced in 2017 due to a drought and subsequent poor harvests. Women reported increases in the implementation of new income-generating activities, earned income, the adoption of climate-smart agricultural techniques and improvements in harvest production as a result of the project interventions. There were mixed outcomes in social norms related to decision-making power, fear of spouse, and confidence in speaking out in mixed-gender forums. Despite the inherent difficulty in measuring changes in resilience, the research supporting the BRB project suggests a sense of “bouncing back” among the treatment group after the 2017 drought in Burkina Faso compared to the comparison group.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Benjamin Crookston, Josh West, Bobbi Gray, Alison Bardsley
Publication Date: June 7, 2019
Date created: June 7, 2019
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.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Infographic
Author: Grameen Foundation
Publication Date: April 15, 2019
Date created: April 17, 2019
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.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Publication
Author: Grameen Foundation
Publication Date: April 15, 2019
Date created: April 17, 2019
The Grameen Foundation program, “Women’s Savings Groups for Better Reproductive Health in Bénin” advanced opportunities for rural women and their husbands to make choices about reproductive health that best fit their individual and family needs. It built on “Healthy Savings,” an earlier program by Freedom from Hunger (now part of Grameen Foundation). The Reproductive Health program worked with women’s savings groups to combine health savings with access to family planning education and linkages to health providers. The program served 11,590 women in 516 savings groups. Gender Dialogues--facilitated conversations about family planning—engaged husbands and partners in discussion, leading to greater joint decision-making among women and men in planning families and choosing birth control.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Allison Bardsley and Bobbi Gray
Publication Date: March 19, 2019
Date created: March 19, 2019
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.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Ana Herrera, Beverly Brul, Ramiro Cadavid, and Eliana Chavarría
Publication Date: January 22, 2019
Date created: January 23, 2019
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).
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Alison Bardsley, Bobbi Gray, Cassie Chandler, and Sabina Rogers
Publication Date: December 20, 2018
Date created: December 20, 2018
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.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Sabina Rogers, DSK Rao, P Satish and Somen Saha
Publication Date: September 19, 2018
Date created: December 17, 2018
Mobile technology, remote-sensing data, and big data are opening opportunities to integrate the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers into the broader agri-food system. In this report, Grameen Foundation, on behalf of Digital Development for Feed the Future analyzes current practices and new opportunities to bring fragmented data, technology, resources, and service providers together to support the farmer ecosystem—with the potential of bringing about another agricultural revolution.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Grameen Foundation, Bobbi Gray
Publication Date: December 6, 2018
Date created: December 6, 2018
Grameen Foundation research among low-income urban residents in India finds a gaping need for dental health financing and services. Nearly half of those surveyed had experienced an dental ailment in the last year, and nearly half of those did not seek care. Lack of dental health awareness, financing and access to services were major obstacles.
Content Type: Resource Type
Resource Type: Research
Author: Grameen Foundation India
Publication Date: September 27, 2018
Date created: November 30, 2018