Why is frugal innovation essential to women’s economic empowerment and digital financial inclusion?
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Why is frugal innovation essential to women’s economic empowerment and digital financial inclusion?
Fireside chat on how digital innovations can unlock an inclusive future for women.
Although digital (financial) services are becoming increasingly available, automatic inclusion of low-literacy, low-income communities in accessing these tools is still underdiscussed. In this session, we hear from different sectors and explore how digital finance service providers can ‘design to include’, and what it takes to design gender-sensitive, inclusive, and contextually applicable services to ensure communities feel included and capacitated.
We will meet in small breakout rooms to share our dreams for an inclusive future, and the work that’s getting us there. Your contribution here will build a vision board for all participants to see!
Interactive workshop that will engage participants in applying tools that can help make your digital solutions and linked services gender transformational. These tools are open-source, but here’s a chance to learn them from the makers!
Guided workshop that will take participants through curricula, tech learning tools, and visual assets that have successfully supported wage digitisation in ready-made garments factories in Bangladesh. Learn how these tools may support your audience too!
Join us on field visits to Itna and Kagapasha, regions known to be some of the hardest to reach in Bangladesh. We will bring you along as we walk through communities with villagers and BRAC staff on their journey for financial inclusion.
Summary of the day and what’ll come on the second day.
Setting the agendas for the day.
A business world more inclusive of women is attainable, and now there are more tools to support them! Super platforms like Whatsapp, WeChat, and Messenger are enabling conversations, businesses and also payments – making it easier for new users and new communities to start up businesses from scratch! What does this mean for women’s financial inclusion?
Networking session – Tried to revolutionise women’s digital financial inclusion and failed? Tell us about it! We’d love to learn.
Live plenary – Wage digitisation can be a massive step towards financial inclusion – but it’s more than just digitising payrolls. In this session, our partner BSR connects with partners to learn how they ensured the transition to digital empowers women and their organisations by linking them to relevant services.
“Off-the-book” fees and non-monetary costs pose a barrier to the uptake and continued usage of digital financial services (DFS). In this workshop, participants will gain an understanding of the various methodologies available to measure the cost of DFS, and participate in a hands-on activity where they will build their own mystery shopping research plan.
Thematic Share-out of the latest research in client segmentation and gender barrier analysis, visualised like you have never seen before!
Summary of the day and what’ll come on the last day.
Setting agendas for the day.
The bones of digital financial services (smartphones, ID documents, PINs) often limit access for low-income and tech-phobic communities, particularly women. In this session, we discuss how women can be placed at the centre of designing inclusive technology and finance solutions.
Financial inclusion amid crises is crucial but equally difficult. In this fireside chat, we explore the barriers to implementing digital financial models in the humanitarian sector, modalities that are already implemented and practiced across the world, customising & contextualising DFS in the humanitarian context, and understanding data privacy, consent and agency while designing DFS for vulnerable communities.
Join us on field visits to Itna and Kagapasha, regions known to be some of the hardest to reach in Bangladesh. We will bring you along as we walk through communities with villagers and BRAC staff on their journey for financial inclusion.
The DFS agenda for the future: How can global South partners work together to build a more inclusive world?
A recent ILO report states, “Less than half of all eligible women participate in the labour force, compared to 75% of men.” . . . Women are also more likely to work in informal employment and in vulnerable, low-paid or undervalued jobs. Further, the Global Findex Database 2021 on Financial Inclusion, Digital Payments, and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19 iterates 56% of all those without a bank account were women – meaning
Covid-19 has added fresh urgency to improving the already dismal scenario of our youth’s preparedness for the future world of work. . . . Even before Covid-19 hit, Bangladeshi youths were struggling to find productive employment. While a large share of the Bangladeshi labour force had been stuck in a low-skill, low-productivity cycle, technology had been profoundly changing the global job market and changing it fast. Technology is creating many
24 million people, or 14% of the population, have been newly pushed into poverty as a result of the pandemic in Bangladesh. Learn how BRAC has introduced new interventions to ensure that this group can restart their lives as the country emerges from lockdowns, and build resilience for future shocks. . . . Johura Begum and her husband used to work at a garments factory in Chattogram, southern Bangladesh.
