Monday, February 1, 2016 - 13:04
Last year, we engaged a team of Wells Fargo employees to provide consulting services to ASHI, a microfinance institution in the Philippines. Here, Global Fellow Agnes Ubalde shares reflections from her time in Manila and her field visits to branch locations, during her third week working with ASHI.
This week I had an opportunity to continue exploring the Philippines both thru the discovery phase of my project with ASHI and with my family. Jerry and I rounded out field visits with ASHI with 2 branch visits with ASHI’s staff in their Metro South East Branch, Biñan Laguna and Rizal West Branch...
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Wednesday, January 13, 2016 - 12:48
Last year, we engaged a team of Wells Fargo employees to provide consulting services to ASHI, a microfinance institution in the Philippines. Here, Global Fellow Agnes Ubalde shares reflections from her time in Manila, during her second week of working with ASHI.
While 21 of our Global Leaders including President Barack Obama met in Manila, Philippines early this week at APEC to discuss foreign trade and economic relations between nations – I and Global Fellow partner Jerry Johnston, as part of our discovery and validation phase of our fellowship project for Ahon Sa Hirap, left the...
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Sunday, January 10, 2016 - 12:22
From all of us at Bankers without Borders, we hope your 2016 is off to a great start!
We’ve been reflecting on the impact we’ve achieved together, and what this new year will bring.
Here are some highlights…
We’ve enlisted 20,872 volunteers to date!
So far, we have worked with 20 Fortune 500 companies to deploy their employees on various volunteer engagements.
These range from short-term virtual engagements to longer-term on-site assignments. To some companies, this is part of their CSR and employee engagement program. For others, it is more rooted in professional development with a...
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Friday, October 30, 2015 - 13:07
Looking for an exciting and rewarding internship? Join our Grameen Foundation family! Our Spring 2016 internship applications are now open. For more information about the internship, click here.
(L-R) : Lin Peng, Arcelia Gomez, and Alice Tarantin at Grameen Foundation in D.C.
Grameen Foundation’s Internship Application is a two-step process:
1. Register with Bankers without Borders, if you have not done so already at: grameenfound.force.com/SiteRegister
2. Use the following link to complete your Internship Application online: bit.ly/GF-spring-internship
Thursday, October 29, 2015 - 12:46
Happy Pro Bono Week! A heartiest thanks to the Bankers without Borders community for your continued support and dedication to volunteer with us.
For those of you who haven’t met me, I just wanted to reach out and introduce myself as BwB’s new Director, and share a little about me and our vision going forward.
You may have seen our recent announcement that our Founder, Shannon Maynard, who built the Bankers without Borders program from just a concept idea 7 years ago, has accepted a new position as the Executive Director of the Congressional Hunger Center.
I had the opportunity to work closely...
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Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - 08:51
The Grameen Foundation Fellowship provides a big opportunity for skilled professionals to make an impact in the fight against poverty. We were recently reminded of this yet again when, at a meeting with senior microfinance/financial inclusion staff at the IFC, our new report on microfinance poverty outreach in Latin America was heralded as a highlight in development effectiveness research.
The lead author and analyst on that report was one of our 2014/15 fellows, Naomi Crowther. Naomi came to us with an undergraduate degree in Economics from Sussex University and an MPA in Public and...
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Monday, July 20, 2015 - 14:46
Every day in the office, I hear the words pregnancy, condoms, and sexual & reproductive health – something unimaginable back in my previous life as a management consultant in the US. But now with the Grameen Foundation in Ghana, it’s become my new normal and the topic of daily discussion with team members in the No Yawa program. “No Yawa” means “No problem” in Pidgin and targets Ghana’s youth population (age 15-24) by addressing their high unmet sexual and reproductive health needs. We currently boast over 185,000 users as of June 2015!
No Yawa was born out of a partnership between...
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Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - 07:55
While I’ve spent most of my fellowship time working out of our office in Accra, Ghana, getting out in the field to engage with our end users has been some of my most valuable and enlightening time yet. Grameen Foundation’s “human centered design” approach means that we emphasize understanding the end users’ needs, behaviors, and culture from the product development phase all the way through to the day-to-day maintenance of the product. Over the past few months, I’ve been lucky enough to travel within the central and western regions of Ghana with two of our Mobile Health programs, gaining...
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Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - 09:12
Professor Muhammad Yunus was the special guest at a gathering organised by Grameen-Jameel on the 16th February 2015 in Cairo, to discuss the new Egyptian microfinance law and the development of the microfinance industry in the Arab region and beyond. In conjunction with his presence in Egypt for the “Conference of the Egyptian and Arab Woman 2030” hosted by Nisf El-Dunia - Al Ahram Group, Grameen-Jameel took the chance to invite the father of microfinance to share with the major key players the challenges and opportunities offered by the new law, to reflect on where the microfinance industry...
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Friday, February 20, 2015 - 12:58
My last week at Shikhar was very hectic - I felt the pressure to accomplish everything as much as I can, like last minute meetings with Shikhar’s senior leaders to further validate our recommendations and critical last minute data gathering. I felt emotional at the very end; because I know it will take me a while to be with these wonderful people again that we met along the way. Saying goodbye was very hard and was heartfelt for everyone. The only thing I was thinking at that point was that I know, I will always try my best to reconnect to these people (one way or the other) especially when...
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