USAID

May 30, 2016

Digital finance in Bangladesh: Empowering or excluding women?

This blog draws from discussions on the progress of digital financial services, during a seminar in Dhaka in April 2016. The seminar was organised by BRAC Social Innovation Lab, Access to Information (a2i) and USAID’s mSTAR project implemented by FHI 360. IFMR LEAD was the Knowledge Partner for the event. 
March 8, 2016
The skilled girl effect

The skilled girl effect: Worth more than the US and Chinese economies put together

An hour away in the rural town of Tongi, Mahmuda Akhter, 16, sits in a mobile phone servicing shop in the main market. A stressed looking customer rushes in with his phone. Holding a small screwdriver, Mahmuda pries open the cover of his mobile and diagnoses the problem.
July 30, 2015

Rising from rock bottom: How Ebola survivors are getting back on their feet

“After losing my husband and four children, surviving alone with my youngest child has been so difficult for me that it makes me wish that we had died together. The trauma of EVD (Ebola virus disease) will forever live within me,” says Jeanet Wee, an Ebola survivor.
March 12, 2015

Mobile money improves incentive schemes for health workers

Often community health workers (CHWs) are promised incentives for their work, but the complicated, protracted, and at times, insecure process of disbursing funds is demotivating. USAID’s Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) project, with the help of USAID’s mSTAR project implemented by FHI 360, pilot tested a transition from cash to mobile financial services.