Marie Mintalucci's Contact Details

Marie Mintalucci's Company Details

WomenSave

Rukungiri, Western Region, Uganda • 6 Employees
Financial Services

WomenSave expands financial access to underserved women in developing economies with goal-based saving and mobile money. Our Savings Officers, who are local women with business administration degrees and skills, offer clients financial literacy training and one-on-one financial advisory services. They support them to design soft commitment savings plans for goals they choose as well as individual emergency funds. Importantly, clients set up mobile money accounts and learn how to use them. Their Savings Officers then send them weekly SMS text reminders to make contributions to their savings plans via mobile money. Our model relies on research that shows that women are inherent savers and that people are more likely to save if it is on a regular basis for a specific purpose. And our pilot project in western Uganda proved just that. In nine short months (in 2020!) our approximately 500 clients saved an average of US$35 and 78% of them met their financial goals (e.g., buying a goat, paying school fees), demonstrating that WomenSave brings underserved women into the formal financial system in a low-risk and high-impact way.