Ideate brings together public and private stakeholders for financial inclusivity and better nutrition

Islamabad, PK (8 December, 22): Bopinc partnered with Ideate innovation for a discussion event aimed at improving financial inclusion and health in low-income communities in Pakistan. The event took place on 3rd December 2022 at a private venue in Islamabad. Global and national players from the finance, health, and gender sector were in attendance including participants from some notable organizations like World Bank, Karandaaz, Tabadlab, GAIN and Ideo.

The event kicked off with introductions from the organizing parties, Ideate and Bopinc. Following this, Nick van der Velde, financial inclusion lead at Bopinc, and Ideate employees presented topic-relevant cases from the field. After the information-rich-cases were presented to all attendees, four groups were formed with each group having members from various sectors. Each group picked problem statements formulated by Bopinc and Ideate. 

A group exercise followed the introduction. In this session, each member of a group would suggest how their specific expertise would be applied to find opportunities at resolving a problem statement. Eventually, every group combined strategies to present a work plan for each problem statement presented at the start of the session. This exercise allowed participants to learn how other professionals would approach financial inclusivity and nutrition challenges. They also learned how their skillset could be utilized in a holistic work plan.

The goal of the event was to encourage collective effort among the organizations and people that had previously not collaborated. Through a joint effort, Ideate and Bopinc hoped to find new methods and interventions in the finance and nutrition sectors. Organizers were of the view that the brilliant work being done by public and private entities could have better results if they worked together. The event showed participants diverse methods and future avenues for collaboration on financial inclusivity and nutrition.

Topics that specialists from various sectors debated included reputational risk for women, the negative perception of financial inclusion of women, and the negative perception of women with mobile phones. Other themes discussed were learning from community-saving systems to adopt in digital banking, increasing reproductive autonomy among females, and enabling safer access to digital services. 

These topics looked at health and financial inclusion problems from the perspective of gender equality for Pakistan’s low-income communities. The problems were phrased in a way that the solutions would attempt to solve multiple facets with the least amount of interventions required. Thus, the entire event was aimed at introducing not only far-reaching but also efficient design interventions. Ideate stayed true to its nature with efficiency in mind for the group discussions and the solutions emerging from them.

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