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Financial Education in the Digital Age: It’s affordable, it’s scalable – but does it work?
Financial education is a key strategy for achieving full financial inclusion. But in-person group training by a human trainer have failed to consistently improve beneficiaries’ knowledge and behavior, and they are often too costly to scale. Nowadays, however, individualized financial education can reach millions at a low cost via digital platforms. IPA is examining the impact and potential of these programs.
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- Education
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NexThought Monday – 12/15/14 – The Over-The-Counter Paradox: Dependence on agent transactions is holding digital finance back – but could agents also move the sector forward?
Over-the-counter (OTC) transactions are mobile money transactions facilitated by a provider’s agent network - and they’re an integral part of most successful services. But while MicroSave founder Graham Wright argues that dependence on OTC transactions is hobbling the development of the digital finance ecosystem, he says these agents could also present a solution.
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- Uncategorized
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Twitter Top Ten – 12/14/14: Our favorite tweets of the week
As we move one step closer to the end of the year, we’ve got a full slate of interesting tweets from the past week. They include some encouraging investments and new partnerships, important new research, and an intriguing reply from Safaricom to a recent NextBillion post. As always, if you see anything you like, be sure to retweet it.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Weekly Roundup – 12-14-13: Is wishful thinking sustaining or stopping global development?
In this week’s roundup, a $64 million (plus) year for off-grid solar investments in developing markets, the inspirational story behind Doorways to Dreams, and The New Republic essay that wants to put an end to wishful (scalable) thinking in development.
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- Energy
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- impact investing, savings, solar
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October’s Most Viewed, Most Shared Posts on NB
The most popular and most shared articles for October focus on hybrid profit/nonprofit approaches to social enterprise, the need for smarter microfinance approaches and the re-issue of a database tracking more than $15 billion in impact fund assets.
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- Social Enterprise
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Wireless Wallets Open Up Health, Education Models: Early observations from two sectors in Kenya harnessing mobile money
While M-Pesa is not as commonly used in Kenya’s social sectors as one would expect, Bridge International Academies and Penda Health currently use mobile money to extend education and health services to the poor. An on-the-ground evaluation found many differences between the programs but some similarities, too, and opportunities to learn.
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- Education, Health Care, Technology
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Building Quality Products to Improve Low-Income Americans’ Financial Health: CFSI, Visa discussion conveys key challenges and opportunities for U.S. financial services providers
What is needed to improve the financial lives of low-income people in the U.S.? CFSI and Visa recently hosted a discussion on this question with notable financial services executives. They challenged the group to identify solutions for the 68 million financially underserved Americans. Kimberly Gartner, CFSI’s Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, describes the conversation that ensued.
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- Uncategorized
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Working from the Inside Out : IDB’s inaugural conference on scaling corporate social enterprise explores building bridges
Last month the Inter-American Development Bank and its associate organizations organized in the first-ever Scaling Corporate Social Enterprise Conference in Santiago, Chile. Entrepreneurs and "intrapreneurs" shared experiences during the event, which allowed reflection over the obstacles each one finds when attempting to scale their social change models.
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- Uncategorized
- Tags
- scale
