Blog

This blog was authored by Tess Bayombong, Maria Adelma Montejo, Emily Janoch, Caitlin Shannon, and Tzusuan Peng. Women entrepreneurs who talk about success in their businesses in the Philippines have fascinating contributions to what success means. Cecile Corio describes an arc of resilience and equality: “I think of ways to recover (my business). Don’t lose trust in yourself. I started from nothing; I can prove that I can lead a better life. … My husband and I have a good give-and-take relationship.”

In the way that cooperatives form when people with common interests come together, apex organizations form when several of those cooperatives organize to achieve common goals. Farming cooperatives have the unique advantage of being engrained in the local context and knowledgeable about their sector. Their value is providing farmers with advantages that make them more profitable than they would be outside of the group. Apex organizations take that farmer support a step further by strengthening the cooperative groups on a larger scale. 

By Emily Langhorne, INVEST Communications Specialist  

Frenki Kozeli, Julian Guelig, and Dany Khy share three approaches to forming private sector engagement partnerships that can be replicated and tailored across development contexts.

Find out what the case of the feed milling industry in the Philippines reveals about the importance of access to credit.

John Owens reflects on his work as the Chief of Party for Chemonics in the Philippines for most of the four phases of the Microenterprise Access to Banking Services (MABS) project.

At the 2012 SEEP Annual Conference, Jacobo Menajovsky of Grameen Foundation and Mary Liz Kehler of Fundación Paraguaya presented two client-led data tools that help inform the design and delivery of products and interventions for the poorest.

Microfinance Opportunities’ experience shows that consumer education messages are most effective when repeated often and delivered using a mix of communication channels.

The Rizal Commercial and Banking Co. (RCBC), one of the largest commercial banks in the Philippines, has introduced an SME business loan program which gives women the opportunity to increase their financial capacity and meet the growing demands of their business.

This blog was originally posted on the CGAP Microfinance Blog as part of a blog series looking at the role public funders can play in branchless banking. How can governments effectively support mobile financial services (MFS) expansion? Over the past ten years, the U.S. government (USG) has provided both direct and indirect support for MFS program development. Here are some examples of how the USG has acted as an indirect catalyst to support program development and implementation.

Harshika Errangani blogged about the SEEP 2010 Annual Conference.