On my recent trip to Bangladesh, I had the good luck to cross paths with and chat over dinner with Maria May and Amanda Misiti, two members of the Social Innovation Lab at BRAC who are engaged in advancing the organization’s mobile money agenda. Founded in 1972 in a rural village in Bangladesh, BRAC is one of the world’s largest and most influential nonprofits, serving by its estimates over 135 million people in need.
Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, BRAC’s Social Innovation Lab is sponsoring a new BRAC Innovation Fund for Mobile Money. The fund will implement the most innovative of ideas related to mobile money proposed through an open call announced here. A direct link to the Innovation Fund website is here.
The website calls for a short description of the proposed idea; full proposals will be elicited from those initial ideas deemed to have the most potential. Proposals could include ideas to switch existing programs from cash to mobile, or to integrate mobile technologies into service delivery in other ways. The challenge closes on April 10th so submit now!