FINCA Microfinance

FINCAs Women Community Mobilizer is aimed at increasing the female financial inclusion footprint by leveraging SimSim, as a digital channel and a platform. FINCA aims to create an ecosystem whereby women employ digital technology in their everyday life, going beyond the typical one or two transactions per month, such as monthly bill payment and cash-in-cash-out (CICO) services. The idea is to use SimSim on a daily basis for frequent, repetitive transactions such as buying groceries, fruit and vegetables, school fees, ROSCAs (online committees) etc. Mera Maan was contracted to conduct a pilot that engaged 8 women community leaders for a period of 8 months in Haripur, KPK.

The community leader’s act as SimSim Agents (RSAs), based on a similar model as that of the existing Lady Health Workers. The RSAs closely engaged with the local community and with women communities and were responsible for building rapport and strengthen ties with the community through meetings and informal gatherings. These women initially had, tablets, to open and operate accounts on behalf of 500 economically active women (already engaged in some trade such as cottage industry, artisan project, skill or factory work etc). The women customers were introduced to the ease of conducting business through SimSim. After an initial handholding period, women would slowly be graduated onto using the digital technology on their own through their feature or smart phones.

Identification, selection and capacity building of changemakers included the following:

• Orientation sessions in the 8 Union Councils to motivate women to apply for this program
• Selection of sixteen aspiring women leaders
• designing and conducting a 3-day residential bootcamp on ‘changemakers to promote financial inclusion at community level’ using a purpose built training module for the capacity building of selected participants
• Initiating Contracts with eight participants graduated as RSAs

Monitoring and mentoring of the RSAs