Make your 2X MATCHED gift today!
This week only: Every $1 will be matched with $2 to empower women worldwide.
Who We Invest In
Farmers
Most working women in low-income communities are in agriculture. We connect them to markets and extension services, so they can increase profits and become resilient in the face of climate change threats.
How We're Investing In Farmers
Entrepreneurs
We partner with women entrepreneurs who lack startup funds or struggle to secure loans and lack access to markets and business training. We work with them to increase access, profitability, and agency throughout their entrepreneurial journey.
How We're Investing in Entrepreneurs
The Next Generation
A world without poverty and hunger depends on the next generation of women being financially included. We build on-ramps to formal financial and market systems so young women can break the cycle of poverty.
How We're Investing in the Next Generation
We Enable New Systems For Women Entrepreneurs and Farmers While Building The Foundation for a More Equitable Future
Learn More About Our Approach to Climate
Advancing Women's Enterprise Ghana
Dorothy and Marty Silverman Foundation
Grameen is collaborating with Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA) under the Advancing Women’s Entrepreneurship for Northern Ghana (AWE 4 Northern Ghana) project. The goal is to onboard GDCA-facilitated village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) onto Grameen’s digital savings group recordkeeping platform (LedgerLink), digitize their existing records, and begin to link them to formal financial services. The VSLA groups deposit their savings with Baobab Microfinance and access a group loan product that is tailored to the needs, preferences and capacities of the groups. This access to formal credit will allow the women VSLA members to invest more significantly in small scale agriculture or rural enterprises.
Bajaj Women as Agents of Change and Economic Empowerment (W-ACE)
Bajaj Holding and Investment
Grameen is building the entrepreneurial capacity of 650 Grameen Mittras - female agents who provide marginalized households with doorstep access to a range of financial products and services through a digital platform. Grameen expects this cohort of Mittras to provide over 150,000 end clients with financial education and digital financial literacy along with a host of financial, digital payment and other relevant services.
Investment Readiness and Small Business Transformation of Women-Owned Small Businesses
J.P. Morgan Chase Bank India
This grant from J.P. Morgan Chase Bank India is supporting the growth of 300 early-stage women-owned small businesses in the Delhi National Capital Region of India by promoting their investment readiness and digital transformation. Through the establishment of three urban entrepreneurship centers, known as WEE GO Centers, and by mobilizing neighborhood scouts to identify women operating informal businesses, Grameen is working to enable women entrepreneurs to formalize their businesses, build their business management capacities, and gain access to credit and investment.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Scaling Solutions to Improve Viability and Quality of BC Agents in India
The goal of this program is to scale effective and viable Business Correspondent (BC) models in partnerships with BC network managers (BCNMs) through enhanced agent quality and women’s participation. Through this program, we are proposing to impact 445,000 unique BC agents, including 55,000 women BC agents and 2,500,000 customers by engaging with 8-9 BCNM partners like Spice Money, Airtel Payments Bank, Roinet, Indian Bank, and Mobisafar.
Testing Innovations in the Business Correspondent Channel
The project aims to pilot and test digital financial solutions (products, services, and approaches) that have the potential to increase BC viability and effectiveness by going beyond cash in, cash out products as a last mile distribution network. This will lead to sustainable, gender-inclusive, and efficient business models. Through these large pilots, Grameen anticipates directly impacting 230,000 customers, 5,000 microenterprises and 12,000 agents with the potential take up of successful pilots being scaled across 1 million customers and 150,000 agents.
Refugee Finance in Uganda
Uthabiti
Under the USAID Uthabiti program led by Save the Children Federation, Inc. (SC), in partnership with the Response Innovation Lab (RIL), Swisscontact, and Grameen, is facilitating diverse and resilient livelihoods for youth and women from refugee and host communities in Isingiro and Lamwo districts of Uganda. Uthability is promoting value-added opportunities in primarily off-farm activities within selected value chains that offer pro-poor economic growth potential.
As the lead Access to Finance partner, Grameen is supporting the overall goal of facilitating diverse and resilient livelihoods for youth and women from refugee and host communities in Isingiro and Lamwo districts. Grameen is currently training and deploying new mobile money agents in the settlements (recruited from women and youth refugees) who conduct digital financial literacy training with VSLAs and support VSLA linkages with local financial service providers. Grameen also provides these institutions with technical assistance to support their expansion into lending to refugees.
Keith V. Kiernan Foundation
With the support of the Foundation, Grameen is providing complementary support to the implementation of the Refugee Finance program in Uganda, including by digitizing savings groups and linking them to formal financial services, expanding Women and Youth Agent Networks, and providing complementary support to aforementioned USAID Uthabiti project activities. This project aims at ensuring increased access and uptake of financial services, as a key strategy for building resilience, incomes and agency among the rural poor especially women and youth in hard to reach areas.
USAID Entrepreneurship & Investment (E&I) Activity in Senegal
Grameen is working with Winrock International to strengthen Senegal’s business environment, reduce the economic gender gap, and address the poverty rate by increasing opportunities for women and youth to thrive as entrepreneurs. Grameen’s Financial Services Director is leading and monitoring the engagement of an established, reputable brokerage firm to structure, design, and assist in the issuance of a bond by a financial institution aimed to create an accessible and inclusive access to finance mechanism for start-ups and MSMEs, as well as supporting the design and set up of a financial instrument to be hosted by an established and reputable investment fund to make equity investments in MSMEs. Grameen is also supporting the review and design of financial literacy toolkits and materials by business development services providers reached through the E&I program.
Barry Callebaut Sustainable Coconut Project
This five-year initiative aims to increase sustainable supplies of coconut oil, improve the livelihoods of coconut farmers, and create a positive environmental impact in the Philippines.
BC Sustainable Coconut will leverage Grameen’s extensive experience improving the productivity, income, and resilience of Filipino coconut farmers, as well as its wide range of digital solutions and training content to comprehensively address the multiple barriers that cooperatives and farmers face.
Building Economic incLUsion via the BlUe Economy (BELUU)
U.S. Department of State, Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues
BELUU elevates the role of local organizations to harness the power of the blue and green economies to deepen the market participation of women entrepreneurs in the island nations of Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands. Through a Community of Practice, Innovation Prize facility, and digital learning platform, BELUU is building the agency of women entrepreneurs and the private and civil society organizations supporting them to create inclusive growth, enhance resilience to climate change, and stem gender-based violence.
Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) Consortium
Department of State Office of Global Women's Issues, American Bar Association - Rule of Law Initiative
Partners: Search for Common Ground, CIPE
From 2018-23, as a core member of the Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) global consortium funded by the US Department of State, Secretary’s Office for Global Women’s Issues, Grameen worked in Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America with local economic strengthening partners to address GBV as both a factor of poverty and as a potential unintended negative consequence of investing in women’s economic empowerment and financial inclusion. This includes implementing six strategic initiatives in Timor Leste, Myanmar, Sir Lanka, El Salvador, Honduras, Ghana, and Eswatini. Through WAGE, and drawing from adjacent initiatives, Grameen has developed a series of capacity-building tools and approaches (the Power Tools) that enable organizations to advance women’s entrepreneurship and agency while mitigating the risks of GBV and violence against women.
Eschúchame Honduras
Over the 15-month Escuchame project, funded by USAID Catalyst’s Mujer Prospera Challenge, Grameen will support Honduran microfinance institution ODEF to develop an empowering ecosystem of support for young, rural women entrepreneurs living in poverty. Leveraging the capacity building already provided to ODEF through the WAGE Reducing Barriers Initiative to date, and as a strategy to improve the economic security of female clients, ODEF is offering Grameen’s Resilient Life, Resilient Business (RLRB) education to 200 women in northern Honduras.
Escúchame targets 200 young women, ages 18-35, and their male spouses or partners living in rural zones of the northern departments of Yoro, Santa Barbara and Cortés. The project will seek to serve vulnerable and food insecure women and their households, especially among indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples.
Resilience and Inclusion through Investment for Sustainable Agrikultura (RIISA)
Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA)
RIISA is a five-year project led by MEDA with funding from the Government of Canada, in the cacao sector that began in 2021. Its goal is to strengthen the cacao sector through investment and create more sustainable livelihoods for Mindanao women and men farmers and businesspeople. Grameen has been subcontracted to assess and enhance the investment readiness of 11 cacao cooperatives in Davao and BARMM regions, while also enhancing their capacity to achieve gender equality and social inclusion. The project will incorporate assessments, workshops, action planning, and community dialogues to address challenges hindering cooperatives' growth, thereby contributing to the long-term success and resilience of the cacao sector.
Transforming Agriculture in Uttar Pradesh
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Transform Ag in Uttar Pradesh program builds on a knowledge partnership developed by Gates with the Department of Agriculture, Government of Uttar Pradesh (GoUP) since 2018 for the purposes of driving inclusive agricultural transformation in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Grameen and EY (as the Technical Support Unit) are providing technical assistance to GoUP in its promotion of a food systems-based approach through a, nutrition-focused crop diversification; b, innovative women-friendly and climate-smart technology; and c, agri-market linkages.
AgriPath
AgriPath aims to bring sustainable agriculture to scale by identifying, evaluating, and promoting promising pathways for digitally supported agricultural advisory services that effectively and efficiently empower female and male smallholders to make informed decisions and sustainably increase their agricultural productivity, income, and climate resilience through the uptake of sustainable farming practices.
Healthy World Foundation Health and Nutrition Initiative
The specific objectives of this project are to increase awareness of dietary intakes, iron and folic acid supplementation, calcium supplementation, and hygiene practices through an integrated education package for pregnant women and parents of young children in Uttar Pradesh, India.
EASIS Philippines
Philippine Carabao Center
This program improves extension services offered by the Philippine Carabao Center by rolling out the KBGAN iHealth and iFeed applications and the External Customer Satisfaction Rating System. The extension services support carabao farmers to ensure the health of their herds and thus the resilience of their incomes. Grameen is also monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness in field usage of the two apps so they can be scaled up in the future.
Walmart Foundation Market Access eNabled by Digital Innovation in India (MANDI)
The MANDI project, now in its second phase, aims to increase the incomes and resilience of 35,000 smallholder farmers (50% women) in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, as well as the sustainability of 50 farmer-producer organizations. Grameen will introduce market linkages to FPOs, support FPO leadership with technical skills, enable the FPOs to become more viable and sustainable with respect to governance, management, and operations, further deepen gender transformative impacts, and focus on building farmer and enterprise-level resilience to climate change by promoting a "one farm" approach.
U.S. Department of State, Reducing Barriers to WEE Initiative
Leveraging Kiva’s crowdsourcing platform, Grameen established an $800,000 loan matching fund that ultimately facilitated more than 10,000 loans to women mSMEs by three MFIs in El Salvador and Honduras. MFIs received TA in: training staff in gender and power dynamics; linking clients to the CuentaNos emergency and GBV support service platform; offering RLRB; and developing gender and safeguarding policies.