Support for 12,000 Micro-Entrepreneurs
Scaling financial education through innovative digital tools
This month Opportunities NOW hosted 30 Microfinance (MFI) Loan officers for a 2 day event to train them how to best support their organization’s borrowers.
We wanted to take what we’ve learned in supporting Base of the Pyramid entrepreneurs and share it with the wider financing community. Each of these loan officers supports on average 400 borrowers. The ability to make a tangible impact for many micro-entrepreneurs across Myanmar is exciting.
For the training-of-trainers we focused on an interactive experience. We know that most of these loan officers do not have lots of time in their busy schedules to spend in creative entrepreneurship support so we created some simple tools that they can use while doing their job. These tools focus on asking good questions, using stories, and implementing group activities — many of which they don’t even have to lead themselves.
The capstone was our new Facebook Messenger Bot which is designed to train micro-entrepreneurs in financial literacy through a interactive fun conversation with Mr. Finance (Maung Sa Yin Khaing). Loan officers can connect their clients with the bot, then allow their clients to grow in financial understanding on their own time as they complete Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories, set up loan and savings reminders, and deepen their understanding of finance.
Financial Literacy education has been historically weak in Myanmar, so Opportunities NOW has joined with USAID to respond to this burgeoning need. Read this post about an exciting new digital financial services tool recently launched for the Myanmar market. Check out the pictures from the Training here.
