Events

This learning event directly follows the SEEP Annual Conference (Oct. 1-3)

Time: 8:30 am – 12:00 pm

Location: Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel, 2800 South Potomac Ave
Arlington, Virginia 22202

Background

CARE’s recently completed POWER Africa project increased the financial inclusion of over 750,000 poor, food insecure individuals and their households in Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Côte d’Ivoire. The project was anchored around CARE’s Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) methodology and a suite of layered trainings geared toward entrepreneurship and business management. CARE worked with local organizations and government to form, train, and link Village Savings and Loan Association groups to financial service providers, mobile network operators and markets. What worked? What didn’t work? How can this learning inform current and future programs?

Agenda

8:30 - 9:00 am: Continental breakfast, coffee, tea

9:00 - 9:15 am: Welcome and introduction of participants

9:15 - 9:45 am: General introduction of the POWER Africa project

9:45 - 10:00 am: High-level presentation of POWER Africa learning briefs and documents related to the following topics:

• Financial inclusion for youth, particularly girls
• The role of VSLAs/savings groups in promoting resilience
• Linking savings group members to formal financial services

10:00 - 11:15 am: Break-out groups on different topics to share participants’ related experiences and discuss challenges encountered by POWER Africa and what they mean for future programming on different topics, for example:

• Trade-offs between promoting entrepreneurship for girls in school and completing formal education
• Possible unintended consequences of women’s economic empowerment work and approaches to changing gender norms related to financial inclusion
• Linking to formal financial services – client protection and regulation; sustaining financial product usage and improvement; digital financial literacy and capability
• Other topics of interest identified through registrant responses to the pre-event survey (and/or developed on the spot at beginning of the session)

11:15 - 11:45 am: Feedback across break-out groups, questions, group discussion

11:45 am - 12:00 pm: Closing remarks

12:00 pm: Networking lunch (provided by CARE)

Please join us for a networking lunch, to be followed by the Global Learning Series: Applying a Market Systems Approach to Savings Groups

THIS LEARNING EVENT IS HOSTED BY CARE INTERNATIONAL