Social Cohesion

This report offers insights from the pilot of DreamSave conducted in 2021-22 by TechnoServe and DreamStart Labs among 40 savings groups in the Zou, Collines and Borgou Departments in the Benin Republic. This included 31 pre-existing savings groups (“paper-to-digital”) and 9 newly formed groups (“born-digital”).

On April 26-27, 2023, the Global Digital Development Forum was held online, co-organized by USAID, Chemonics, IBM, Deloitte, DAI, Google, RTI International, Save the Children, Interledger Foundation, Bixal, Palladium, and TechChange. While the event has now passed, anyone who is interested can still register here to access recorded sessions. All of the recorded sessions are […]

This resource contains information and research about the Digital Sub-Wallets project implemented by CARE in Uganda. Digital Sub-Wallets was a savings group approach to address the unique needs of women in terms of formal financial services, individual agency, relations, and informal structures such as gender norms.   The intervention was twofold. First, participating Village Savings […]

This NGO CSW67 Forum Parallel Event, hosted in March 2023 by Global Communities, explored innovations in savings group programming that have the potential to transform unequal gender norms, reduce violence, strengthen women’s digital and financial inclusion and expand the benefits of savings groups for members with limited literacy and numeracy. In addition to digitization of […]

CARE has operated savings and lending programs through Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLAs) since 1991. This learning brief outlines CARE’s strategies to advance gender equality in these programs. The brief details experience from four VSLA projects in Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia which added gender transformative approaches to the traditional savings group model. Among […]

For the 2023 International Women’s Day, FinDev Gateway compiled research and blogs published about women’s financial inclusion in the previous twelve months. Members of the DSG Hub will likely find the collection of resources on “Digital Finance That Works for Women” most relevant.  These resources include:

FinEquity’s 2023 Annual Meeting explored the nexus linking financial inclusion, women’s empowerment, and climate change, with the purpose of understanding how financial services can help women adapt their livelihoods to erratic rainfall patterns and rising temperatures to mitigate climate risks. Among others, the speakers addressed digitally-enabled financial inclusion, stressing the importance of designing digital financial […]