ANNUAL REPORT

Transcription

1 ANNUAL REPORT

2 ABOUT GRAMEEN FOUNDATION Grameen Foundation is a global nonprofit organization that brings innovative and sustainable solutions to the fight against poverty and hunger. Together with local partners, we equip families, women, and smallholder farmers with resources and services that expand financial inclusion, strengthen resilience, enhance health and improve livelihoods. We were founded in 1997, inspired by the work of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and a global leader in the fight against poverty. He was a founding member of our board of directors and today serves as member emeritus. We have been recognized for our high standards and efficiency by Charity Navigator, the Better Business Bureau s Wise Giving Alliance and Guidestar s Exchange Seal. 02 Data collected from farmers in the Philippines helps us predict and address threats from pests and disease. (Photo: Grameen Foundation)

3 HOW DO YOU MEASURE A YEAR? We often measure in numbers. They tell us a lot about our reach and our impact. About how much life has changed for the people we serve. This past fiscal year, the numbers are worth celebrating: Grameen Foundation far exceeded our initial goals for the number of people reached by our work. Across 22 projects, we reached 3.19 million people, exceeding our target by 124 percent. We reached them through deep collaboration with local partners, developing solutions such as mobile health messaging apps for pregnant women and new mothers; innovative financial services for poor rural women; and digitally enabled agricultural information services that provide advice and access to new markets for poor farmers. But beyond the numbers, it is individuals that matter. Individuals like Lajjawata in India. Coming from a long line of laborers, Lajjawata s top goal is to educate her children. With the support of Grameen Foundation and our partners in Uttar Pradesh state, she has expanded her clothing business and can now conveniently repay her microloans at a local mobile money agent instead of traveling for miles to a branch office. Training in financial and digital literacy, and the safety of such transactions, strengthens Lajjawata resolve as she builds her business and saves for her children s future. In the last fiscal year (April 1, 2015-March 31, 2016), 1,972 individual supporters enabled us to innovate and implement new solutions to poverty across the countries and regions we serve. We thank you. Finally, we also evaluate annual progress based on our own evolution as a learning, growing organization. And this past fiscal year, we experienced considerable change, even as we explored new approaches to our work. The year saw Founder and CEO Alex Counts pass the baton of leadership to Steve Hollingworth as our new President and CEO. We also assessed the possibility of joining forces with a sister organization, Freedom from Hunger. That process has since culminated in the integration of both organizations into one even stronger entity, offering more services to more people in pursuit of our mutual goal of ending extreme poverty. The new Grameen Foundation combines our expertise in digital innovation to solve poverty with Freedom from Hunger s deep experience in providing the world s poorest women with self-help tools. Together, as one organization, we are now working to enable the world s poorest people to create a world without hunger and poverty. We re excited about what we as communities, partners, supporters and staff will achieve together in the year and decade ahead. Lajjawata s future and those of millions more opened up thanks to supporters like you. Robert Eichfeld, Chairman of the Board Steve Hollingworth, President & CEO 03

4 INTRODUCTION Grameen Foundation and Sonata are helping women like Archana repay microloans by phone. (Photo: Grameen Foundation) Over the past year, Grameen Foundation programs and partnerships enabled more than three million people across Asia, Africa and Latin America to embrace new opportunities for a better life: a life free from poverty and hunger. The solutions they embraced emerged through the close collaboration of Grameen Foundation and our partners, working together to understand and solve deep-rooted problems of poverty. And from Asia, to Africa, to Latin America, this year thrived on innovative partnerships. In the Philippines, we launched FarmerLink to improve the livelihoods of coconut farmers earning just US$450 a year. One of our most ambitious programs yet, it works through a consortia of partners spanning government, agribusiness, banking, and technology. In Kenya, we continued to deepen our relationship with Musoni, a digital microfinance organization whose ground-breaking loan products provide a fresh start for struggling smallholder farmers. In India, our partnership with Sonata and Oxigen Mobile Money is creative to its core, and last year connected more than 23,000 poor rural women women like Lajjawata to financial services. In Colombia, our work with the farmer cooperative Andes, supported by Inter- American Development Bank, Citi Foundation, Mastercard, and Kiernan Foundation, aims to improve financing opportunities for thousands of farmers over the next three years. With your support, strong partnerships, and the engagement of millions of people on the ground, fiscal year 2016 was one to celebrate and build upon. We share highlights below. TOTAL REACH IN FISCAL YEAR , OUR 22 PROJECTS REACHED 3,193,430 PEOPLE, EXCEEDING OUR TARGET BY 124% PERCENT. 1,839,873 PEOPLE, OR 58% OF THOSE REACHED, WERE LIVING BELOW $2.50/DAY. NUMBERS BY PROGRAM magriculture 332,788 FINANCIAL SERVICES 171,431 mhealth 2,689,211 04

5 TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES AGRICULTURE TRANSFORMING LIVELIHOODS Grace Gyasi is one of the more than 2 billion people around the world who make a living through farming small plots of land. The 60-year-old grandmother supports a family of 10, growing maize, okra, garden egg (eggplant) and pepper on a half-acre plot in rural Ghana. Farming is her only option. That s the case for many small-scale farmers who, despite their industriousness, make up the majority of the world s poorest people and half of all food-insecure households. We have designed solutions to help smallholder farmers overcome daily challenges, such as crop pests and diseases, insufficient funding and poor nutrition. Our solutions incorporate digital technology, local networks of trainers and partners. In the last fiscal year, our programs helped almost 333,000 farmers access solutions to earn more from their land, and improve their family s health and wellbeing. One such program is AgroTech in Ghana, launched in late It enables farmers to access information and financing for their businesses through a mobile software application, radio campaign and farmer-led production of videos on best agricultural practices. We partnered with Farm Radio International and Digital Green to create the radio and video content. equips the agents with digital technology that helps analyze farmers needs, delivers agricultural advice and enables farmers to secure loans to purchase inputs. It s a winning package of support for resource-poor farmers working to increase their productivity and secure markets for their crops. In Ghana, the AgroTech program, which is funded by the New Alliance ICT Extension Challenge Fund, has reached more than 320,000 smallholder farmers in 29 districts. In Colombia, work we began with the provincial government in Antioquia to improve nutrition and agricultural productivity through backyard gardens benefited 3,400 people. We also worked with fhi360 to provide agricultural information to 9,363 people in Uganda, through a program funded by USAID. REACHED 332,788 COUNTRIES: COLOMBIA, GHANA, UGANDA The program also works with field agents who train farmers in good agricultural practices, and connects those farmers to buyers. AgroTech Grace was able to join a farmers group through the AgroTech program in Ghana that helped her obtain high quality seeds and adopt new farming practices. This substantially increased her maize crop and income, and she now wants to double the size of her farm. (Photo: Grameen Foundation/Nana Kofi Acquah) 05

6 TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES FINANCIAL SERVICES REACHING THE UNBANKED POOR 06 Determined to succeed, Lajjawata, a micro-entrepreneur in India s Uttar Pradesh state, turned to Sonata Microfinance, a Grameen Foundation partner that provides microloans and other services to women in Uttar Pradesh state. The right loan at the right time can make an enormous difference for a woman like Lajjawata and her family as long as she is able to use it knowledgeably, and has the means to repay it. REACHED 171,431 COUNTRIES: COLOMBIA, INDIA, KENYA, PHILIPPINES, UGANDA Lajjawata was the first member of her family to try her hand at business. She and her husband started by selling saris door to door in Gadhaganj, a village in the north of India. But they needed to earn more for their children s education. (Photo: Grameen Foundation) We design financial services to ensure that borrowers are informed customers, combining training in financial and digital literacy, and delivering services that improve their bottom line. These services can include tools for secure savings, payments, training, and micro-insurance for health or small businesses. Partners, such as Sonata, play a crucial role. We partner with banks, microfinance institutions, mobile operators, and others to develop and deliver sustainable solutions to poverty. We began working with Sonata, and Oxigen (a mobile payments provider) in 2014 to make it easier for rural women to repay their microloans. These hard-working women save on both time and money by making payments through Oxigen agents in their village. The program also increases Oxigen s operating efficiency, enabling it to reach more poor women. The program has reached 23,222 women to date and continues to grow. Smallholder farmers, many of whom are women, also face unique challenges. They often cannot get loans because lenders think farming is too risky, leaving them with few options to weather crisis or build their farm business. Last year, our combined Agriculture+Financial Services work benefitted almost 6,000 farmers in Uganda, Colombia and Kenya. In Kenya, we are working with Musoni Kenya to provide a loan product we co-developed, Kilimo Booster, to 78,000 farmers in the next five years. Our work there is supported by MasterCard and FINTRAC (under USAID s Feed the Future program).

7 TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES HEALTH Nursing can be challenging on its own. Imagine having to travel by foot, motorbike, and even canoe, for hours to see your patients. That s the daily routine for Valerie McCarthy and other community health workers in rural Ghana. Not only can travel be difficult, but working in these distant locations means nurses are also cut off from families and regular opportunities for professional development. The challenging conditions often lead to high turnover, and therefore affects the quality of healthcare in rural communities. In response, Grameen Foundation partnered with Concern Worldwide, the Ghana Health Service, and John Snow International to develop CHN on the Go, a smartphone app that is helping Valerie and other nurses. (CHN stands for Community Health Nurse). Using the app, they can diagnose patients quickly in the field, plan their weekly schedules, stay abreast of new medical information and training, and receive richer feedback from supervisors and peers. The pilot program benefitted 264 nurses who collectively served 66,403 patients across five districts. CHN on the Go is one example of health solutions we have designed to address issues such as maternal and infant mortality, disease treatment and prevention, health and nutrition, or sexual and reproductive health. These solutions often make use of digital technology to communicate health information over mobile phones, to train and manage frontline health REACHED 2,689,211 COUNTRIES: GHANA, INDIA, KENYA, SIERRA LEONE Working in a remote, rural community was tough for Valerie McCarthy. Now with the CHN on the Go mobile app, she has up-to-date medical information at her fingertips, can discuss challenges with her supervisors more easily and continue her professional training. (Photo: Stephen Morrison for Concern) workers, and to facilitate vaccine clinical trials in outbreak situations. Many organization also use MOTECH, a multipurpose platform developed by Grameen Foundation to help organizations more effectively disseminate and collect health information via mobile phone. In India, two programs, Kilkari and Mobile Kunji, have been rolled out nationally across MOTECH. In the last fiscal year, the Kilkari mobile health program delivered health information on safe pregnancies and healthy infants to 1,988,031 women. In Ghana, we have worked with DKT International and Marie Stopes International to provide information on sexual and reproductive health to 142,347 teens and young adults through the No Yawa program. 07

8 BOMA Project uses our TaroWorks app to track its work with Masai women in rural Kenya. (Photo: TaroWorks ) STRENGTHENING THE FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY Ending poverty and hunger will take a global movement of organizations working together. This is why we work with partners to tackle the most stubborn problems, and have developed and shared an array of products and services to help other organizations be even more effective. AS OF MARCH 31, 2016: Volunteers in our Bankers without Borders program have provided $20.3 million in in-kind services to social enterprises around the world since organizations that collectively reach more than 185 million people have used our Progress Out of Poverty Index (PPI ) to measure household poverty, and to track and improve their services since organizations in 31 countries have used our TaroWorks mobile application to efficiently collect, analyze and act on data from field operations that collectively benefit 3.5 million people. 08

9 CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL POSITION [ AS OF MARCH 31, 2016 ] TOTAL SUPPORT & REVENUE $18,181,928 TOTAL EXPENSES $22,353,800 OTHER ITEMS* $673,802 CHANGES IN NET ASSETS $4,845,674 NET ASSETS AT BEGINNING OF YEAR $13,823,811 NET ASSETS AT END OF YEAR $8,978,137 *Other items covers allowances for uncollectable loans receivable and investment impairments; refund of unspent grant funds and foreign exchange rate loss. TOTAL EXPENSES $22,353,800 19% 1% HOW YOUR DOLLARS ARE SPENT PROGRAMS - $17,857,460 ADMINISTRATIVE - $4,254,234 FUNDRAISING - $242,106 80% PARTNERS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY Thousands of supporters and partners enable Grameen Foundation to carry out the work outlined in this report. We especially want to thank the following organizations that provided invaluable support to our programs in FY16. Barclays Bank Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Citi Foundation Cisco Concern Worldwide Dimagi ebay Ford Foundation GAIN International Development Research Center JPMorgan Chase Marie Stopes International MasterCard Qualcomm Rockefeller Foundation USAID Vodafone 09

10 TAKE ACTION Everyone can play a part in ending poverty for women and families around the world. You make it possible to equip Community Health Workers like Valerie with life-saving information, and for rural women like Lajjawata to save for their children s school fees. Here are some ways in which you can be involved: GIVE TODAY We have made great progress. But so much more remains to be done. To find out how you can join the team in the fight against poverty, visit grameenfoundation.org/give. Your gifts are fully tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. GIVING AT WORK Many companies generously support their employees philanthropic causes. Learn how you can designate Grameen Foundation in your workplace matching gifts program at grameenfoundation.org/matching. GRAMEEN FOUNDATION LEGACY SOCIETY Make a planned gift by designating Grameen Foundation as a beneficiary in your will, retirement plan or life insurance policy. You ll help poor families build new futures, while simultaneously reducing your estate and income taxes. For more information, visit grameenfoundation.org/plannedgiving. VOLUNTEER Join our Bankers without Borders volunteer corps and use your professional skills (regardless of your field of expertise) on projects to help the world s poorest either on-location or from your desk. Learn more at LIKE US ON FACEBOOK StopPovertyNow FOLLOW US ON FIND AND FOLLOW US on LinkedIn SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL ON YouTube.com/Grameen SUBSCRIBE TO OUR ENEWSLETTER AT grameenfoundation.org READ OUR BLOG AT grameenfoundation.org/blog RIGHT: Maria is helping farmers in Colombia produce and earn more from coffee. (Photo: Grameen Foundation). FRONT COVER: Farmers like Theresia can now receive and repay loans via mobile phones. (Photo: Grameen Foundation/Riccardo Gangale). BACK COVER: Together with Musoni Kenya, we are helping farmers build stronger businesses. (Photo: Grameen Foundation/Riccardo Gangale). Printed in U.S.A Design by 10

11 GRAMEEN FOUNDATION 1400 K Street, NW, Suite 550 Washington, DC Phone: Fax: WORLDWIDE OFFICES Find contact information for Grameen Foundation offices in Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, the Philippines, Uganda, and the United States online at OTHER GRAMEEN FOUNDATION ORGANIZATIONS GRAMEEN FOUNDATION INDIA (Wholly-owned subsidiary) C 201, Nirvana Courtyard, Nirvana Country, Sector 50, Gurgaon INDIA P: / E: info@grameenfoundation.in GRAMEEN CAPITAL INDIA, LTD. (Joint venture) No. 402, 36 Turner Road. Opposite Tavaa Restaurant Bandra (West), Mumbai P: / E: info@grameencapital.in GRAMEEN-JAMEEL MICROFINANCE LTD. (Joint venture) International Humanitarian City. Building #4, Office 139, First Floor. Dubai Industrial City P.O. Box Dubai, U.A.E. P: / E: info@grameen-jameel.com

12 Grameen Foundation 400 K Street, NW, Suite 550 Washington, DC Phone: Fax: