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In partnership with BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia), MSC connected BRILink agents to cooperatives under the Women Digital Ambassadors (WDA) project. The linking was part of our efforts to increase the accessibility of financial products and services for Indonesia’s rural women. We used MSC’s Datin app to monitor and evaluate each agent’s transactions and generate findings from the field. These findings allowed us to identify opportunities and challenges in linking agents to women cooperatives, which we distilled in our new blog. Read it here.

The Women Digital Ambassadors (WDA) project intended to increase the uptake of digital financial services among women entrepreneurs in rural settings. In this project, MSC organized training sessions on digital entrepreneurship and basic digital financial skills for members of PEKKA Women Cooperative in Bantul, Batang, Karawang, and Tangerang regencies. This blog presents lessons from the training sessions, encompassing the most accessible entry point to improve digital skills, compelling content and training delivery methods, and the impact of peer learning.

Timestamps of the webinar on 3rd February 2023 on “Advancing Climate Resilient Agriculture in India: Key Lessons and Challenges”. The session sought to understand good practices that helped advance climate-resilient agriculture in Bihar and elsewhere in India alongside persistent challenges due to climate change risks for smallholder farmers.

MSC collaborated with NITI Aayog’s Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP) to publish this report, which maps 70 central schemes and 433 state schemes across 28 states in India. The report identifies scheme-based support available across six essential needs of entrepreneurs and shares some best practices implemented by state governments to improve access and uptake of schemes. Read the report for key recommendations on the design and delivery of schemes to make them more accessible and effective for women entrepreneurs.

River erosion has affected Bangladesh’s low-lying lands for millennia. The rivers change course over the years and cause loss of land and assets for people who live near the riverbanks. Climate change has added additional complexities to these natural processes and made poor and vulnerable people much worse off. Together, these processes continue to widen the gap between the rich and the poor.

Bangladesh remains highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with flooding affecting 20-70% of the country annually. Women and poor farmers are often the worst hit, despite having a minor role in causing climate change. Even though farmers and local communities know of changing weather patterns and take steps to mitigate the effects, they lack adequate financial resources, which limits how well they can adapt to these changes.