BRAC, a leading NGO has taken an initiative to provide various financial services to poor people through mobile phone technology, enabling them to alleviate poverty.
With the support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BRAC is likely to begin providing of the services later this year, according to a BRAC press release issued Monday.
In this connection, the BRAC launched 'innovation fund' Sunday last at a programme on "Frugal Innovation Forum: Scaling Digitally" at Savar to explore new development strategies and ideas enabled by the mobile money for implementation targeting the poor people.
Sir Fazle Hassan Abed, BRAC founder and chairperson, Asif Saleh, BRAC's senior director, and Liz Kellison, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Deputy Director of Strategy, Planning and Management, officially launched the fund.
BRAC's Social Innovation Lab hosted an open challenge, whereby anyone can submit an idea as to how mobile money can improve the lives of the poor.
Selected projects will be implemented by BRAC in Bangladesh over the course of the next year. At the Frugal Innovation Forum, over a hundred participants representing thirteen countries spent two days sharing their experiences with mobile money and data, and learning about the latest innovations emerging from the global South, said the press release.
Mr Saleh shared his thoughts over the issue saying that "Often NGOs lack the space to take risk and innovate. Therefore, adoption of new technology can take a long time. Mobile money is an exciting new tool for financial inclusion and service delivery across many sectors, and we're really thrilled that the Gates Foundation has given BRAC support for experimentation in this initiative. We're seeing a lot of great ideas and look forward to beginning implementation later this year."
Sir Abed at the launching programme said, "During my last meeting with Bill Gates, he expressed his concern about how to help poor people safely. That's why he supported us getting mobile money off the ground. Now I am very interested in getting new ideas through this fund and I look forward to a lot of thinking behind new ways to help the poor."
BRAC, the world's largest NGO, impacts more than 120 million people in Bangladesh and works in eleven other countries. It is widely considered one of the most innovative and effective NGOs in the world, most notably for achieving success at scale.
