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Accelerating Women's Financial Inclusion

We're leveraging Myanmar's Smartphone Revolution and local women's networks to bridge the gender gap and empower women

in the formal economy. 

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Mobilizing Myanmar

A Smartphone Revolution Connects

Women With Economic Opportunity

Copyright © 2016-20 Paula Bock 

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and philanthropic investors, Mobilizing Myanmar conducted a large pilot project in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Delta, suspending operations in February 2021. 

 

In wet markets, bamboo homes and village gatherings, women  trained women to safely and effectively use mobile financial services to break the cycle of poverty. 

Because Myanmar has extensive network coverage, pervasive smartphone usage (even among the poor), and progressive regulations, it was an ideal lab environment to test innovations and demonstrate how unbanked women can empower themselves using digital tools. 

We look forward to sharing best practices widely in order to advance women's financial inclusion in the ASEAN region and beyond. 

What We Do

Mobilizing Myanmar empowers women to lift themselves out of poverty using the smartphone technology that's already in their hands.

Why

Myanmar?

Though Myanmar is the poorest country in Southeast Asia with the least developed financial system, it has leapfrogged most nations around the globe in mobile phone and internet usage.

 

Most people in Myanmar have jumped straight to smartphones. 

Copyright © 2019 Paula Bock

Why Women? 

Copyright © 2019 Paula Bock

On the surface, mobile money is about technology and apps.

 

But at its core, in a nation where 38 percent of the population lives below the global poverty line, it's about transformation of society as women escape poverty, safely earn and save money, network with each other and gain power. 

It's about changing social norms. 

We're

Bridging 

the

Gender

Gap

Copyright © 2016 Paula Bock

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