Last year I was part of a team that conducted a Financial Diaries study of young people in Morocco, Nigeria, and Senegal as part of comprehensive research on “Young People in Africa” that was conducted on behalf of the Scale2Save Programme— a partnership between the World Savings and Retail Banking Institute and the Mastercard Foundation. The team has produced […]
Covid-19 and the Hrishipara Diarists – July 2020: A Big Rebound – But Only for Some
The story so far These blogs offer a running commentary on how 60 low-income households in central Bangladesh who volunteer as ‘diarists’ in our daily financial diary project have coped with the pandemic. The first blog in this series was written just after a ‘corona lockdown was enforced in Bangladesh on 26th March 2020. The second showed how bad things got during […]
Hategekimana Innocent: My Experience Working With L-IFT on the ‘Finbit Application Experiment’
My name is Hategekimana Innocent. I am 25 years old. I am from Congo. 13 years ago I came to the Nakivale Refugee Settlement with my family and I live with my parents, two sisters, and one brother. My education level is Senior 6. From June 2017-2019, I worked as an office assistant with Humanitarian […]
L-IFT’s Refugee Finance Project
L-IFT is very pleased to work for Opportunity International and PHB on a financial diaries project designed to better understand the financial lives of refugees living in Uganda. Opportunity International aims to improve financial inclusion and relies on L-IFT’s human-centered financial diaries methodology in order to design tools better adapted to refugees’ needs. During the […]
Opening Windows, Creating Opportunities!
“When one window is opened to you, jump into the house and extend the opportunity by opening 10.” That’s what Mibaraka (standing in the picture) wrote. He then went on: “The experience with L-IFT pushed me to mobilize people for a saving group that we named CLISO (Change our life by increasing savings and assisting orphans). This […]
Covid-19 and the Hrishipara Diarists – June 2020: Still Waiting
The story so far The first blog in this series was written just after a ‘corona lockdown’ was enforced in Bangladesh on 26th March 2020. It discussed the reaction to the shock of the 60 low-income households in central Bangladesh who volunteer as ‘diarists’ in our daily financial diary project. The second blog showed how bad things got during April, the […]
Hrishipara Daily Financial Diaries: Education and Occupations
To what extent are occupations shaped by the family’s educational record? In early 2018 we published a blog called Bangladesh and Education: doing well, could do better. It was based on late 2017 data from the Hrishipara Daily Financial Diaries project, which has been tracking the lives of 70 low-income households in central Bangladesh since May 2015. […]
Meet Ngoy Daniel: Our Respondent from Nakivale Refugee Settlement
Ngoy Daniel is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but due to the multiple challenges he faced in his country, he fled to Uganda, Nakivale Settlement in 2014. He is living in the settlement together with his wife and six children. In order to take care of his family in the settlement, he […]
Covid-19 and the Hrishipara Diarists: May 2020: Climbing for a Fall?
The story so far The first blog in this series was written just after an anti-corona lock-down was enforced in Bangladesh on 26th March 2020. We showed how the shock was dealt with by the 60 low-income households in central Bangladesh who volunteer as ‘diarists’ in our daily financial diary project. In the second blog, we saw just how bad things […]
Meet One of Our Field Researchers in Kiryandongo
Dear Blog Readers, A few days ago I received a blog written jointly by Frehiwot (our program assistant) and Bingo, one of our faithful long-term researchers in the Kiryandongo refugee settlement. The blog introduces Bingo and sheds some light on his life and work and his experiences as a refugee. Frankly, I was not sure […]