Our Programs

Community Agent Network Revolving Fund

Grameen is working with Digipay (a mobile-based digital payments solution platform that offers bills payment, e-Load, e-PINs, Mobile Money and microinsurance) and Gloriosa (a financing company) to develop a revolving loan Fund. The Fund shall be utilized to make a loan to community agents, who are registered with Digipay, to finance their working capital, thus enabling them to grow their enterprises.

GrameenStart

The purpose of this grant is to strongly encourage and support the continuation of efforts to realize the goals Grameen defined in its proposal for the GrameenStart Fund (GrameenStart), a new $30 million early stage venture fund. GrameenStart will provide blended finance to incubate and grow social enterprises that are poised to positively impact the lives of poor people with an emphasis on women, smallholder farmers, and other underserved groups. GrameenStart will support and catalyze inclusive fintech innovations, agricultural technology for poor farmers and other promising social enterprises in low income African and Asian countries through customized packages comprised of seed funding, equity, quasi-equity and debt investments combined with a technical assistance sidecar. The fund will be a separate legal entity, managed under Grameen’s multifaceted umbrella of initiatives designed to promote the financial health and inclusion, economic empowerment and resilience of poor, rural women and their households.

Reducing the Incidence of Child Labor and Harmful Working Conditions in Economic Strengthening Initiatives (RICHES)

With funding from the U.S. Department of Labor, Grameen Foundation is implementing a multi-sectoral capacity building project to integrate the issues of child labor alleviation and acceptable conditions of work into WEE initiatives. In partnership with the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative, we are developing and deploying a new toolkit to better equip policy makers and service providers to educate women entrepreneurs and ensure women-led enterprises can improve livelihoods responsibly, and comply with laws protecting children and promoting acceptable conditions of work. After testing in two strategic locations, El Salvador and the Philippines, the tools will become available for broader distribution and global application.

Reducing Barriers to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Central America, a strategic initiative of the Women and Girls Empowered program

In 2018, Grameen Foundation co-launched WAGE, a four-year, global program to advance the status of women and girls worldwide. It aims to support women’s economic empowerment; prevent gender-based violence; and advance women’s roles in peacebuilding, mediation, and reform processes. WAGE core partners also include the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and Search for Common Ground.

Grameen Foundation is leading WAGE’s first strategic initiative, “Reducing Barriers to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Central America.” Working in El Salvador and Honduras, we are assessing the key barriers faced by women entrepreneurs, particularly in gaining access to finance. That assessment will guide the provision of technical assistance to local microfinance institutions that serve women (ODEF, CrediCampo, PADECOMSM). The initiative will also support the development of a loan matching fund administered by Kiva and address barriers posed by gender-based violence, conflict and insecurity, and social practices that inhibit women’s abilities to start up, finance and grow their businesses.

Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE)

WAGE is a global programming consortium composed of American Bar Association, Rule of Law Initiative; Grameen Foundation; Center for International Private Enterprise; and Search for Common Ground, along with 43 resource partners. WAGE develops and implements strategic initiatives, rapid response activities, and collaborative research within three core thematic areas: gender-based violence; women, peace & security; and women’s economic empowerment. Our goal is to strengthen the capacity of civil society in target countries to effectively advance the status of women and girls. Grameen Foundation is leading several current initiatives, including the Reducing Barriers to Women’s Economic Empowerment in Central America, and the Business and Social Support in Timor Leste program, and is jointly developing several more.

Financial product innovation in Ecuador to serve small-scale producers

As a member of the SAFE platform, ECOM is a strategic partner for Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) which is focused on innovations that can increase agricultural productivity in Latin America. In Ecuador, ECOM’s subsidiary Agroarriba is engaged with MIF in piloting innovative approaches that improve farmer productivity, resilience, and adaptation to climate change. Many of the small-scale producers that Agroarriba works with have little exposure to agriculture techniques and financing for agriculture intensification, such as drip irrigation, that have been successfully implemented on larger farms. In partnership with Oikocredit and Netafim, a leading irrigation company, Agroarriba set out to test the commercial viability of drip irrigation innovations with small-scale producers. Recognizing that producers in rural communities are challenged by funding for agriculture intensification, Agroarriba engaged Grameen Foundation to help develop 1) a loan product for a drip irrigation that accounts for the season nature of farming and the needs and preferences of producers in rural area, and 2) an alternative credit scoring model that can help Agroarriba streamline their lending process while fostering production levels and loyalty among cocoa producers.

Savings Mobilisation & Innovative Lending Efforts (SMILE) for Refugees, Uganda

Under a grant from Financial Sector Deepening Uganda, Grameen Foundation is supporting a South Sudanese microfinance institution, Rural Finance Initiative (RUFI), to extend formal savings and credit financial services to refugees living in the West Nile region of Uganda via digital linkages to savings groups. With the aid of our LedgerLink solution, Grameen is leading the development of two products: 1, the introduction of a digital group savings wallet and linkages to formal savings accounts at Centenary Bank; and 2, the digitization of savings group operations and linkages to formal credit at RUFI. Savings groups will use their phones to record all transactions, while the system will create credit scores which will allow RUFI to process savings group loan applications in real-time. Deposits and withdrawals to Centenary Bank savings accounts will be made using mobile money. In addition, youth borrowers will receive assistance from RUFI in setting up their businesses through training, mentoring and grants for asset acquisition. The project will thus enable refugees to become banked via digital channels, formal savings and credit services, while also attaining knowledge to help them develop their enterprises. RUFI will also expand its outreach of services (scale and access) while improving its commercial viability. In the long term, we expect the project to have transformed the beneficiaries into self-reliant and skilled individuals with financial resources that can ably allow them self-settle (if they so wish) and fully provide for their family even in the absence of humanitarian assistance.

Digital Literacy Training Curriculum, Bidi Bidi

With the support of GSMA, and in partnership with MTN Uganda, Grameen is developing a digital literacy training curriculum targeted at refugees living in West Nile, Uganda to increase their adoption of mobile financial services. The curriculum will enhance understanding and comfort with mobile financial services available in Uganda, and increase capacity to use basic phone applications. It will thus serve as an entry point for rural and vulnerable populations with very low or no digital literacy to begin to productively utilize mobile and Internet services as tools to improve their income, health and education outcomes. This initiative complements efforts to increase agent network coverage, increase recruitment of female agents, and refine agent training curriculum to improve agent services available in the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement.

Pro-WEAI in Burkina Faso

Launched in 2012 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, and USAID’s Feed the Future program, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture (WEAI) was the first comprehensive standardized measure to capture women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector. The follow-on Pro-WEAI seeks to assist individual organizations and projects with measurement tools that can assess the empowerment of women within the context of agricultural projects. A member of the “Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project—Phase 2” (GAAP2) led by IFPRI, Grameen is piloting the pro-WEAI in Burkina Faso (as a complement to the evaluation activities of the Building Resilience in Burkina Faso project). The pro-WEAI builds upon the five domains of agriculture in the WEAI—production, resources, income, community leadership, and time use—and tests additional domains such as physical mobility, intra-household relationships, autonomy in decision-making, self-efficacy, life satisfaction,attitudes about domestic violence, and nutrition. Results of Grameen’s research will shed light on both the components of empowerment in the rural Burkina context as well as changes in empowerment associated with the BRB project.

Building an Enabling Financial Services Ecosystem for Refugees in Uganda (BE-FIN)

With support from the Keith A. Kiernan Foundation in 2019 and 2020, Grameen Foundation is working with South Sudanese microfinance institution, Rural Finance Initiative (RUFI) to increase the financial inclusion of South Sudanese refugees, especially women, living in Bidi Bidi and Palorinya refugee settlements and host communities in West Nile, Uganda. Current activities include: linking 175 savings groups receiving RUFI loans to complementary business skills training to increase effectiveness of loans for sustainable business development; providing 175 groups with refresher financial education and Ledger Link training; building the capacity of RUFI to expand linkage savings and credit to an additional 150 savings groups and take over savings group linkage activities after the close of project; human-centered design research to develop digital financial service user interfaces that are easily accessible by low-literacy populations; and, working with MTN and/or Airtel to develop digital financial service user interfaces that are usable by low-literacy populations.

Mobile tools to support Ebola Vaccine Deployment, Acceptance and Compliance (EBODAC)

Ebola Vaccine Deployment, Acceptance and Compliance (EBODAC) is a consortium of organisations comprising the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, World Vision Ireland and Grameen Foundation and is funded by the European Union’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and EFPIA. The EBODAC consortium has developed strategies and tools to maximize the impact of Ebola vaccination programmes to ensure the right person receives the right vaccine at the right time. EBODAC is important because the successful development and deployment of an Ebola vaccine is faced with many challenges, especially when working in resource limited settings. EBODAC has supported clinical trials of the Janssen and Merck Ebola vaccines in Sierra Leone, while simultaneously preparing for the future deployment of any licensed Ebola vaccine through a series of linked projects focused on communications, community engagement, and enabling technologies.

Grameen is charged with deploying a mobile health platform to support the vaccine adherence by providing access to information, services and tracking. The work, which is phased to first undergo a trial, will roll out to reach potentially millions of affected people, is intended to be integrated with each country’s Ministry of Health-led national vaccine campaigns. Grameen is also deploying a Mobile Training and Support (MOTS) service to train community health workers (CHWs) in the field using interactive voice response (IVR) technology. This training platform delivers voice recorded training content in local languages on two training modules: one of on Vaccines Vaccination and the other on (Ebola) Disease Surveillance and outbreak response. IVR messages are delivered in the chosen language of the CHWs via their own mobile phones: be it basic-feature phones or smart phones.

Evaluation of the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme

The Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) form not only one of the least developed regions of the world but also the most underbanked. The Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) was launched in 2008 to increase financial inclusion and improve livelihoods among low-income populations, particularly among women, in Fiji, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Solomon Islands (SOI), Tonga and Vanuatu with recent entry into Kiribati and Tuvalu. PFIP-II is supported by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), United Nations Development Programme, the Governments of Australia and Zealand, the European Union’s Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Microfinance Framework Programme and the Russian Federation.

UNCDF contracted Grameen Foundation India to conduct the final impact evaluation of PFIP. The final evaluation consisted of a desk review of existing programmatic and research papers; four site visits that occurred between July and August 2019 to Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea where key informant interviews (KIIs), focus group discussions (FGDs) and client surveys were conducted; KIIs of key staff that oversaw and supported PFIP-II regionally and globally; and, analysis of these data sources. Evaluation findings focused on PFIP-II’s relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. The study concludes with a set of recommendations proposing the way forward to ensure achievement of PFIP goals.

Village Insurance Savings Accounts (VISA), Uganda

With support from USAID, the University of California Davis, Feed the Future Markets, Risk and Resilience Lab is leading efforts to accelerate and protect inclusive agricultural-led economic growth by designing and testing a suite of innovative solutions to address key challenges to the advancement of agricultural index insurance. Grameen Foundation will support one of the innovations by designing and testing the uptake of quality products through Village Insurance-Savings Accounts (VISAs).

The VISAs will be offered to existing savings group members in Uganda to enable potential insurance clients to develop a savings plan and contribute regularly to a savings account dedicated to the purchase of index insurance. This will also allow aggregation of insurance demand, which releases a major constraint to insurance companies from participating in agricultural insurance, and education to potential insurance clients about both the benefits and limitations of agricultural index insurance.

USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Access to Finance, East Africa

The USAID-funded John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program provides technical assistance to farmers, farm groups, agribusinesses and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries to promote sustainable improvements in food security and agricultural processing, production, and marketing. The main goal of the program is to generate sustainable, broad-based economic growth in the agricultural sector through voluntary technical assistance. A secondary goal is to increase the U.S. public’s understanding of international development issues and programs and international understanding of the U.S. and U.S. development programs.

The F2F Access to Finance in East Africa program, led by the International Executive Service Corps (IESC), aims to help a broader population of farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Sri Lanka become bankable, while also stimulating product innovation and improving post-loan support to borrowers. Through Grameen’s Bankers without Borders^® platform, Grameen will source volunteers to support demand-driven capacity-building activities focused on digital financial services. Grameen’s volunteers will bring backgrounds in banking, finance, IT, marketing and other fields to serve a diverse set of host organizations, including commercial banks and microfinance institutions; farmer groups and cooperatives; and savings groups and rural savings and credit cooperatives.

USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Agricultural Volunteer Opportunity Program (AVOP), Philippines

The USAID-funded John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Agricultural Volunteer Opportunity Program (AVOP) provides small grant funding available for international development programs focused on expert volunteer technical assistance.

Under the Capacity-building of the Coconut Subsector (COCOS) program, Grameen will deploy 64 American volunteers to the Philippines over a four-year period to build the capacity of coconut farmer groups, agribusinesses, extension providers and financial service providers. This assistance will be designed to increase the productivity, profitability and resilience of the Philippines’ coconut smallholder farmers. The specific objectives are to a) increase agricultural sector productivity and profitability and b) expand agricultural sector access to financial services while encouraging the application of technology and innovation as a cross-cutting theme. Sixteen agencies will be selected to receive support from the volunteers, who will be recruited via Grameen’s Bankers without Borders^® platform.

USAID Farmer-to-Farmer, Rural Enterprise Development in Colombia

The USAID-funded John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) Program provides technical assistance to farmers, farm groups, agribusinesses and other agriculture sector institutions in developing and transitional countries to promote sustainable improvements in food security and agricultural processing, production, and marketing. The main goal of the program is to generate sustainable, broad-based economic growth in the agricultural sector through voluntary technical assistance. A secondary goal is to increase the U.S. public’s understanding of international development issues and programs and international understanding of the U.S. and U.S. development programs.

Through its Bankers without Borders platform, Grameen is recruiting volunteers who will deploy to Colombia for two to three weeks. Volunteers will support the development, application, and expansion of financial, commercial and technical agricultural services for smallholder farmers, especially women and youth, to generate sustainable, broad-based economic growth and job creation. Volunteers will serve a diverse range of host organizations, thereby directly and indirectly thousands of smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs in the coffee, cacao, sugarcane (panela), fruit, vegetable and potentially other value chains.

Sat4Farming, Ghana

Grameen developed the digital farm development plan (FDP), now called FarmGrow, for cacao farmers in Indonesia in collaboration with Mars and Rainforest Alliance. Grameen is now using the solution in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire under the Netherlands Space Office-funded Sat4Farming project. Through the FarmGrow mobile application, field officers of cocoa traders collect farm-level data that is analyzed using “smart logic” to allow for personalized FDPs that guide farming households to plan ahead and better manage cost and financing of their farming operations. Most importantly, the “business” plan provides a snapshot of the potential income (or loss) over the long-term that can be generated from following recommended practices.

WomenLink (Phase Two), India

Since 2017, in partnership with Wells Fargo, Grameen Foundation is implementing WomenLink to catalyze WEE through the breakthrough use of digital financial services among poor and low-income women in India, as well as the Philippines and Colombia.

In India, Grameen has tested out the efficacy of different delivery channels on client product awareness, uptake and utilization. Over the course of 2018, Grameen achieved strong outcomes on training community agents using the G-LEAP platform and worked with clients to plan their short- and medium-term financial goals. In 2019, Grameen laid the foundation of a women-led agent network system which will provide doorstep financial and non-financial services to engaged participants and at the same time, developed an ecosystem of strong and symbiotic partnerships with the private sector to expand the reach and diversity of product offerings. In 2020, Grameen will expand its women-led agent network to underserved areas, strengthen foundational partnerships with the private sector (and other social enterprises) and ensure sustainability of the network by increasing/improving/diversifying product offerings, digitizing the ecosystem and increasing incomes of the community agents.

WomenLink (Phase Two), Philippines

The partnership with Wells Fargo was framed in late 2017 around a three-year set of expected outputs and results that would receive annual funding to catalyze economic empowerment through the transformational use of digital financial services by women in India and the Philippines.

In 2019, Grameen in collaboration with its two Fintech partners Actionable and DigiPay deepened and expanded its financial and digital literacy work targeting both Community Agent Networks as well as their end-clients using digital tools including SMS messaging and a digital learn platform (GLEAP) developed and promoted by Grameen Foundation India. The result of this work is a digital professionalization toolkit for Community Agents. Grameen also identified a growing demand for the service of a third-party agent network manager serving multiple products and supporting multiple agent managers as a Social Enterprise.

In 2020, Grameen’s focus is to improve the agents professionalization toolkit and to deepen and turn the Community Agent Network program into a self-sustaining social enterprise that may provide fee-based services to fintechs and financial service providers that are seeking to expand their agent networks. Grameen will work towards enhancing digital financial literacy, promotion of good business practices and empowerment of entrepreneurs. By delivering quality service, more women and their households will be able to partake in the digital space and increase their uptake as well as access to financial services. Wells Fargo employees will also be engaged as volunteers through Grameen’s Bankers without Borders^®platform.

Digital Inclusion Via Education (DIVE) Phase Two, India

The goal of the Phase Two of the Digital Inclusion via Education (DIVE) program is to drive sustained behavior change in adoption and usage of digital financial services among low income populations in India through scaling the “Grameen Mittras” community agent network. The program will reach an additional 500,000 people in Nagpur district of Maharashtra over 18 months. Grameen Foundation for Social Impact (GFSI) with support from Citi will leverage strong use cases for digital finance identified so far (balance enquiries, mobile recharge, cash withdrawals, bill payments etc) and combine digital financial literacy with convenient access to digital services. The Grameen Mittra approach employed in the project is designed for scalability, sustainability and effectiveness.

Women’s Economic Empowerment in India

With support from Ford Foundation, Grameenis leading the eighteen month Women’s Economic Empowerment in India program (November 2019 - April 2021) to catalyze women’s financial inclusion and entrepreneurship opportunities in rural India. Grameen and its partners will first expand the Grameen Mittra social entrepreneurship model and second, advance the SDG Impact Bond model.

Under activity one, Grameen and its partners will expand the Mittra network by onboarding 400 new female agents, who are anticipated to serve 200,000 rural end-clients in Nashik district in Maharashtra. The Mittra model incorporates: customer education, onboarding, and servicing; product and business case development with additional partners; and selection and specialized training of new female agents.

Under activity two, Grameen and its partners will advance the innovative SDG Impact Bond model in order to accelerate economic and social outcomes for agriculture MSMEs and their beneficiaries throughout India. Specifically, Grameen will provide a First Loss Default Guarantee (FLDG) which will function as a guarantee to those impact bond investors and funders who invest in the Agriculture Impact Bonds.

TaroWorks: Fighting Poverty with Real-time Data (renewal)

Globally almost a billion people survive on less than $2 per day, living predominately in isolated rural and hard-to-reach locations. They have limited access to goods, services and information. A rapidly growing social enterprise sector is working hard to address the challenges this population faces. In an effort to accelerate the scale and impact of social enterprises, Grameen Foundation built TaroWorks, a field service management platform that helps these organizations do their work, particularly in remote or disconnected areas.

TaroWorks is collaborating with Cisco Systems to support the economic empowerment of the poor by enhancing the operational capacities of non-profits and social enterprises working to alleviate poverty in emerging markets worldwide. The current grant will allow TaroWorks to continue building its customer base.

Conectadas: Building Financial Capabilities and Entrepreneurship Skills among Latin American Women and Girls via Mobile Technology

Grameen is supporting Millicom through its program, “Conectadas: Building Financial Capabilities and Entrepreneurship Skills among Latin American Women and Girls via Mobile Technology.” Grameen will design educational content for a mobile phone application that will teach women entrepreneurs how to grow their businesses and manage their finances using various technology platforms.

Launched in Guatemala in 2017, the Conectadas program was built on the understanding that gender equality expands economic growth, promotes social development, and enhances business performance. Likewise, digital connectivity can help women bypass social restrictions and lead to better outcomes for their livelihood and for the health and education of their children. Due to the program’s success, Conectadas will expand to El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Columbia, Paraguay and Bolivia.

Over the course of 10 months, Grameen will research, design, test, and deliver digital content to Millicom that will enable women owners of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to use their phones to improve their financial literacy and mobile entrepreneurial skills.

The Grameen-designed education modules will be built on the Mobile Usage Module already developed by Millicom’s partner Sheva, and will be designed to achieve four learning goals: Understanding Personal Finance Concepts and Digital Finance Options; Business Finances and Accessing Financial Options; Leveraging Digital Branding and Marketing; and Using Social Media to Grow a Business.

The content will also include short, 1-2-minute videos, followed by quizzes to reinforce the learning. Grameen will draw from the best of edutainment approaches to introduce additional creative approaches, while maintaining a deep commitment to Adult Learning Principles and Objective-Based Learning.

Extension and Advisory Services Information System (EASIS), Philippines

The EASIS project aims to develop an ICT-based extension and advisory service information system customized to the needs of the smallholder dairy buffalo farmers in the Philippines. Grameen will work with Philippine Carabao Center to design, test and rollout a breakthrough solution that will leverage the existing cohort and network of village-based knowledge brokers to act as an advisory pool, providing access to information and immediate response to address the concerns and challenges of farmers raising livestock, including but not limited to buffalo disease diagnosis and control, herd and breeding management, as well as product handling, processing and marketing. The project shall be implemented in three phases:
Phase 1: Identification of Scope of Work and Learning Modules Development
Phase 2: Mobile EAS App Solution Implementation and Testing
Phase 3: Farmer Profiling, Monitoring and Evaluation and Roll out of Mobile EAS App

For Phase 1, Grameen will be performing market research activities and employing a human-centered design process to produce five learning videos, prototype and test the mobile EASIS application, and conduct a readiness assessment for the next phase of the project.

Business and Social Support in Timor Leste, a strategic initiative of the Women and Girls Empowered Program

Addressing the intertwined, gendered business and social challenges faced by female-owned micro and small enterprises (MSEs) is a critical step to combating widespread household poverty and ensuring a stronger economic future for Timor-Leste. Given the interlinked nature of poverty and gender-based violence (GBV) in Timor-Leste, where rates of abuse and domestic violence against women are higher in poorer areas, women MSE owners need a holistic set of services that can address the financial, business, and social constraints (such as GBV) that they face. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Timor-Leste are currently providing access to finance to women entrepreneurs, but services are not attuned to gender norms or the risk of GBV, nor linked to business and social support services. At the same time, women’s empowerment-focused civil society organizations (WE CSOs) have developed business skills and GBV trainings that aim to reduce Timorese women and girls’ vulnerability to poverty and violence, but these do not always reach MFI clients. Given the lack of institutional linkages, female entrepreneurs are not able to access or use microfinance or training in an optimal fashion, reducing the resilience, growth potential and local economic impact of their businesses.

Grameen Foundation will leverage its unique expertise in financial inclusion and women’s economic empowerment to lead the Business and Social support to female Entrepreneurs in Timor-Leste (BEST) program. A strategic initiative of the DOS/GWI-funded Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) program, BEST will enable MFIs and WE CSOs to align their respective social development goals in order to provide female entrepreneurs access to both financial and social support. To ensure the requisite expertise in GBV and women’s rights, Grameen will partner with American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI); for a successful implementation grounded in the local context, Grameen will partner with Alola Foundation, a leading WE CSO. Over 24 months, Grameen and ABA ROLI will build the capacity of local MFIs and WE CSOs through technical assistance and small grants that facilitate the development, piloting and evaluation of formal linkages that ultimately enable poor women to succeed as entrepreneurs. Through geographic targeting of districts with the highest poverty headcount, the project will serve female entrepreneurs most at risk to GBV. A research and learning component will support future replication, adaptation, and scaling.

Integrating the Response to GBV, HIV, and Economic Marginalization of Swati Women, Eswatini, a strategic initiative of the Women and Girls Empowered Program

The goal of this strategic initiative of the WAGE consortium in Eswatini is to strengthen the collective capacity of civil society organizations and lawyers to improve legal protections for women affected by or at risk of gender-based violence (GBV) and HIV, to promote effective prevention strategies, and to provide holistic services and referrals to GBV survivors. Grameen Foundation will support ABA ROLI to respond to the needs of help women experiencing GBV. This will be done by enhancing capacity of lawyers and CSOs to advocate for better laws protecting women, providing support to prevention initiatives, including those aimed at mitigating the risks of GBV associated with economic strengthening programming, and improving referrals and holistic GBV services to women affected by violence including their access to livelihood support.

The beneficiaries of this program include Swati women and girls who are at risk or experiencing GBV and HIV, men and boys in the target communities, GBV-focused CSOs, livelihood and economic strengthening- focused CSOs, and the government.

Youth Champions for Digital Finance, India

Grameen Foundation for Social Impact (GFSI), with support from Experian India, is working to spread digital financial literacy in Bhandara district of Maharashtra, with an aim to boost uptake and usage of digital financial products by low income populations. GFSI aims to reach 30,000 individuals, both women and men. A network of 300 local Youth Champions is being recruited, trained and deployed to serve as last mile trainers and ambassadors for digital finance. Based on the experiences and learning gained in the first year of the Experian-supported project, GFSI is now working to reach 30,000 additional people in the district. Out of the 300 Youth Champions recruited during Project Phase 1, 100 will be selected to become self employed agents as a “Grameen Mittra”. These Grameen Mittras will be equipped with biometric authentication devices and connected to a range of financial and non- financial services, so that they can pursue this activity as a self-employed individual. GFSI will partner with a number of financial and non- financial service providers to bring the products and services offered by them to the community. Some example of services to be offered includes (i) digital payments (ii) remittances (iii) mobile top-up/ recharge (iv) electricity bill payments (v) accessing various government services (vi) wealth management services (vii) savings services (viii) micro loans for small businesses (ix) agricultural inputs and (x) continuing education. The services will be rolled out in a phased manner.