How We Use Digital Tools To Alleviate Poverty, the Fundación Capital Way.
This article by Mwimbe Fikirini was originally published in the The Start-Up Journal.
For the billions of people living in poverty around the world, every day is a struggle to pay for basic needs like food, shelter, medicine and education. To get out of poverty, people need reliable sources of income and access to finance to increase their earnings. But if you’re poor, you lack social participation and acknowledgement, which in turn limits your access to development opportunities. Without these, you face more difficulties when it comes to saving money, making informed financial decisions, and managing your resources in an efficient way.
If we want people to be financially stable, we need to address the drivers of exclusion, and improve the system as a whole, particularly for women and youth who are more likely to be excluded from engaging in markets. To create lasting change, we need to work collaboratively with governments and other stakeholders including the supply sector for scalability, and use technology to benefit from economies of scale.
That’s where we come in. At Fundación Capital, we design and deliver solutions that make families more financially resilient, and work with governments and the supply sector including banks to create economic opportunities. We believe that when families enhance their economic well-being, they are not only able to get out of poverty but also stay out of poverty.
HOW WE DO IT
We develop and adapt digital solutions to address the target populations’ needs. Defining the details of the context we aim to serve, we explore a range of possible solutions and take them to the people. Field visits are a critical step in product development, as we can conduct in-depth social and user-centered research and testing, and co-create with the audience to obtain relevant and suitable products that truly meet their requirements. Our team then develops the applications based on this first-hand feedback. Before the official launch, the digital solution gets formally tested to ensure it truly meets the peoples’ requirements.
To date, we have developed twenty digital solutions to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of our programs for women, youth, and children. Our tablet-based tools aim to develop financial capabilities for economic inclusion, responsible decision-making regarding finances and consumption behaviours, tracking income and expenditures, entrepreneurship, and life skills. And why do we go digital? Because our aim is to empower at scale — and through tablet-based solutions and partnerships with governments and financial institutions, we can achieve great economies of scale as the cost per user decreases when the reach increases.
In our experience over the last ten years, we have seen that edutainment (learning by playing) in tablet-based learning is highly effective, offering users a number of advantages that maximise understanding, learning, and knowledge retention: Images and audios guide the users step-by-step, and the apps are intuitive and relevant for people with low literacy levels. They are suited to different methods of learning (peer learning, independent learning etc.), and because the modules are short, they can be completed when convenient and repeated as often as needed. Lastly, the applications can be used offline, so users do not require access to Wi-Fi or network signal to use them.
OUR WORK IN AFRICA
In 2015 we began our work in Africa, and over the years our work has expanded beyond providing technical support to designing digital content that is contextually appropriate. In Tanzania, our team developed a financial capabilities application called Jijenge. Through Jijenge, users are able to learn about mobile money transactions, as well as outline basic financial management topics such as savings and budgeting. Since its launch, modifications of the tool have been developed to suit the needs of segments of the population including refugees and smallholder farmers.
To find out more about Jijenge, watch this video:
With the success of Jijenge, the team has since developed another tool to promote basic entrepreneurship skills, called JifunzeBiashara. This application aims to empower users to recognize their own potential in order to make reasonable transformations in their lives, as well as to develop practical skills such as planning and controlling expenses, and saving. JifunzeBiashara is currently being tested with off-school youth and has been trialed with conditional cash recipients with very promising results.
STILL A LOT OF WORK TO BE DONE
With strong partnerships and shared goals, digital solutions have been key in helping us reach six million people in the last decade. But there is still a lot of work to be done: Today, 1.7 billion adults still lack access to a bank account and the ability to save money and safely borrow funds to invest in their businesses. As a demand-driven organisation, we believe that solutions are created through a deep understanding of the problem at hand. We cannot design in a vacuum; rather, solutions are created through research and analysis, with feedback loops coming directly from participants, without intermediation.
We believe that all people in the world have the right to full economic citizenship. We are convinced that access to economic opportunity is a means to this end, reducing vulnerability, allowing the accumulation and growth of human, physical and social assets; thereby strengthening the entire family and community.
