Opportunity International UK (OIUK) teams up with Rural Inclusion to train over 10,000 refugees in Uganda until 2025 with Ostrii
In June 2023, Opportunity International UK (OIUK) started a partnership with Rural Inclusion which will run until December 2025 to use the Ostrii platform as part of their ongoing project in Uganda “Refugees: Innovation, Self-reliance & Empowerment — Transition (RISE-T).”
OIUK is a non -profit organization that provides people living in poverty with access to loans, financial training and savings so that they can work their way out of poverty and build sustainable livelihoods. We focus on three programme areas — Enterprise, Agriculture and Education — which serve Women, Farmers, Refugees, Young People, Schools and People Living with Disabilities. Opportunity International (OI) has been working in the refugee space since 2019, promoting financial inclusion for refugee and host communities in the urban and Nakivale Refugee Settlement. Working through its partner Opportunity Bank Uganda Limited, OIUK has extended tailored financial services to over 20,000 refugees, helping up to 7,600 refugees open up formal savings account, disbursing over loans of over 3 billion Uganda Shillings to 1,892 refugees and delivering financial literacy trainings to over 15,000 refugees.
In 2022, OI attracted funding from the Dutch Government’s Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE). This is a 2.5-year project focusing on job creation and job improvement for refugee youth. The project aims to create and improve jobs by working with refugee-led organisatons and refugee youth to identify employment opportunities and support them to realise their ambitions. In addition, the project will deliver tailored financial services and financial literacy trainings to over 10,000 young refugees in Rwamwanja and Nakivale Refugee Settlements.
Rural Inclusion is a UK-based non-profit founded by technology entrepreneurs and championed by a global network of Inclusion Ambassadors, with a vision for rural communities around the world to be equipped with the skills to be resilient and prosperous.
In 2022, Rural Inclusion launched Ostrii, an offline mobile training app for Village Champions who work directly with community groups. Ostrii is designed to support the most marginalised communities, tackling the challenge of misinformation in rural areas and suitable for those with low literacy levels, through the use of 2D and 3D animated videos.
Ostrii has partnered with organisations across five countries and was awarded the best non-profit project in a developing economy at the Money Awareness & Inclusion Awards in May 2023.
Opportunity International UK (OIUK) Financial Inclusion Officers in Nakivale and Rwamwanja Refugee Settlements will use Ostrii to deliver training to community groups on topics of budgeting, responsible borrowing, investing, saving and insurance. Training will be delivered in the languages of Kiswahili and Kinyarwanda.
Noah Ssempijja, County Lead for the Refugee Financial Inclusion Programme at OIUK said:
“We believe in the power of technology to build refugees’ capacity to manage their finances effectively. By partnering with Rural Inclusion we are able to leverage Ostrii’s digital financial literacy training modules to make financial management information available for over 10,000 refugees. We are excited about this partnership and hope we could scale it to other programs we run.”.
Jack Farren, Co-Founder & CEO of Rural Inclusion said:
“We are excited to begin this innovative partnership and use our technology in collaboration with OIUK to build the financial health of refugees in Nakivale and Rwamwanja.
To learn more about OIUK’s project Refugees: Innovation, Self-reliance & Empowerment (RISE-T), see here: https://www.opportunity.org.uk/what-we-do/who-we-serve/refugees
To learn more about the Ostrii platform, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCiR_v1cEXc
