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Innovation can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be

Welcome to the

Runway to Frugal Innovation Forum

Learn, engage, and connect with leaders from the Global South to explore
and innovate solutions for the world’s toughest challenges.
This year, we’re deep diving into the world of digital financial services
and how we can scale digital innovation for women’s financial inclusion.

Learn, engage, and connect with leaders from the Global South to explore and
innovate solutions for the world’s toughest challenges. This year, we’re deep diving
into the world of digital financial services and how we can scale digital
innovation for women’s financial inclusion.

17-19 May 2022 | Virtual Format

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Happening now!

Day 01 - May 17, 2022
Digital onboarding & Literacy
Day 02 - May 18, 2022
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Day 03 - May 19, 2022
Policy to Practice
Icons-New_Welcome session

Welcome message

Why is frugal innovation essential to women’s economic empowerment and digital financial inclusion?

Icons-New_Keynote session

Designing the future of gender-intentional financial inclusion

Fireside chat on how digital innovations can unlock an inclusive future for women.

Icons-New_ Live plenary

Digital onboarding designed for the poor: Where should businesses meet communities?

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.

Icons-New_Networking session

Visualise inclusive digital services of the future

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!

Icons-New_Workshop

Design for her power: Tools that keep your solutions gender-intentional

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!

Icons-New_Workshop

Training and organisational digitisation tools for onboarding low-literacy users to digital financial services

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!

Icons-New_Premier

Virtual field visit 01

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.

Icons-New-13

Closing message

Summary of the day and what’ll come on the second day.

Icons-New_Welcome session

Welcome message & agenda setting

Setting the agendas for the day.

Icons-New_Informal energizer

Transforming DFS: Super platforms and emerging mechanisms for women’s financial inclusion and entrepreneurship

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?

Icons-New_Networking session

Failure Night

Networking session – Tried to revolutionise women’s digital financial inclusion and failed? Tell us about it! We’d love to learn.

Icons-New_ Live plenary

Use cases that enhance women's financial inclusion: What have we learned from wage digitisation and other digital services?

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.

Icons-New_Workshop

What does it really cost to use digital financial 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.  

Icons-New_Thematic session

Barrier Analysis: Women’s economic empowerment and financial inclusion

Thematic Share-out of the latest research in client segmentation and gender barrier analysis, visualised like you have never seen before!  

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Closing message

Summary of the day and what’ll come on the last day.

Icons-New_Welcome session

Welcome message

Setting agendas for the day.

Icons-New_Informal energizer

Infrastructure for inclusion: How to make digital solutions and services gender-intentional?

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.

Icons-New_Thematic session

How might we ensure digital financial inclusion during disasters and humanitarian crises?

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.

Icons-New_Premier

Virtual field visit 02

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.

Icons-New-13

Closing Runway to FIF 2022

The DFS agenda for the future: How can global South partners work together to build a more inclusive world?

Hear from the experts

Greta Bull
KAM Morshed
Xavier Giné
Shahanaj Pervin
Snigdha Ali
Shofi Taneem
Tanvi Jaluka
Rakib Avi
Salman Sabbab
China Rahman
William Blackmon
Nova Ahmed
Masrura Oishi
Rumee Singh

The status quo

Virtual exhibition

Articles

Betting Long on Women from the Margins to the Mainstream

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

Post-Covid Skills

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

‘New poor’: Ensuring inclusive growth amidst the new challenges of the pandemic

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.

Glimpse of previous editions

The collaborators

Our partners