Poor Women's Fair House Social Credit for Better Life

The problem is urban migrant women and their families living in the  squatter settlements in the city of Port Moresby. Their housing conditions are very poor not fit for human habitat. The outskirts of the city is surrounded squatter settlements. The city authority has started an urban housing development program for middle income earners who have difficulty owning a house. This program will not reach low income earners as may not be able to afford certain criteria of the program. This solution will basically target poor women who are members and owners of the 'Village Women's Financial Services Ltd' to enjoy the privilege of affiliating to modern governance institution where common goals can be pursuit together and achieve together. It is a social product and directed innovative poor urban women settlers. 10,000 women will be reached by this solution and increases thereafter.

The special low-cost house designed to adapt to climate change is marketed to the members of the 'Village Women's Financial Services Ltd'. This financial institution is owned by poor women from both rural  and urban areas. The VWFS is integrates  institutional and organizational systems. It is fundamental for the poor people to understand appropriate systems that can serve their needs or solve their problems these are understood and designed to address their needs. Good governance of the innovative systems can solve a specific in large scale and is applicable in different countries and regions. The VWFS system will provide a special loan product to the poorest urban dwellers to afford houses with land titles and repay with very low amount of money over relatively longer period of time.The VWFS System is similar to other systems but is it innovative in its own right.

The target is the urban poor women whose habitat is in squatter settlements around Port Moresby city in Papua New Guinea. Like all the cities in the  third world countries, squatter settlements evolved as urban migration increases. People have different reasons for migrating to the urban centres. The common reason in search for jobs. Highly educated find white collar and technical jobs, but unskilled and semi-skilled people, and illiterates, mostly youth are unemployed. In this category, poor women who just try sell some products in the informal sector, just to earn sufficient daily to afford basic food needs. These social group is target to raise them to the VWFS platform to direct their livelihood strategies to improve their well being through better housing done systematically.

The financial services, specifically, the poorest women housing development loan product, was initiated and piloted three rural provinces in Papua New Guinea. The poorest had a savings accounts oriented for house construction. During the awareness training, the women made to understand why they were dwelling under a traditional bush material house, while they themselves had advanced to using mobiles. They technologically advanced but still dwelling under poorly built traditional hut. The campaign drove the customers to build 100 semi-permanent and permanent houses. It was found that it was not because they were poor and did not have enough money to build a fair modern house. It was because they did not have family budget and thus did not plan savings for building a house. The VWFS System checks spending of households and help poor people, particularly poor women to achieve a goal of living in a fair modern shelter, at least before they die. The VWFS System conducts research into modelling family budget of the rural tribal communities to an effective and efficient budget that is relevant for achievement of a family house while other basic survival expenses are held constant. The up-scale targets to get 2,000 urban poor women to build their fair modern house. The interest is low and the loan term is longer.

The VWBP Financial System is a new financial service innovation evolved from the People's Action For Rural Development (PsAfRD) that the marginalized poor village women needed a micro-financial system that favours their needs only. With the European Union and the Government of PNG to create an initial seed loan portfolio to enable the village women to access micro-loans with simple lending policies. The VWBP Financial System is the only culturally designed and appropriate for the target population. It had successfully administered Personal Loans, Small Business Loans, and Future Goals Savings and Loan. Its financial education program strengthened the capacity of the clients in budgeting and financial management.

The VWBP Financial System is effectively delivered banking or savings and loans management systems. During the pilot phase the 'Loan Performer' software was used to record all the social and financial information which helped to measure the key performance indicators. The information system handled large database effectively. In this up-scale, we are research with the Fern to use its software more oriented on the micro-financial institutions. Fern systems are linked digital financial transactions which the project use to deliver financial services faster to the customers.

The VWBP Financial System is new innovation and most appropriate  solution to the problem of financial exclusion in the geographical area. The diverse cultures and how these people cope and adapt to modern systems and technologies. The people are slow learners and slow adopters as formal education is slowly reaching them. It is very important to understand the degree of capacity people have in different developing countries to absorb new ideas and technologies. Effectiveness, efficiencies, and relevance is what we need to measure accurately in delivering any new innovations.

5,000 village women who accessed financial and non-financial services because of the institution and its systems were appropriate and easily accessible. In one year expect to reach 20,000 and in five years expect to reach 100,000 women. But this level of out reach will directly depend on the supply of loan funds either internally generated, or supported externally. Once the institution becomes financially sustainable, the out reach of the target group should be at a steady rate yearly.

By the end of 2020, the VWBP Financial System will be able to raise sufficient funds to deliver its core financial services to 20,000 village women and girls.

By the end of five years, the VWBP Financial System will be able to raise sufficient funds, both internally and externally, to reach 100,000 women and girls.

The replication of the system will be able to reach 1,000,000  women and girls in 10 years.

The main barrier is not raising funds to up-scale the VWBP Financial System. This barrier does not seem to be a major problem as the global approaches to address the SDGs are recognizing all the efforts in the most remotest part of the world. The other barrier is provision lack of markets for the rural farmers to sell their produces through value chain markets. Another problem is low capacity of the target market to plan and manage business operations and business finances.

PsAfRD is working strategically on how to raise funds and invest sustainably. As funds for up-scaling become available, PsAfRD expects to generate revenues which had been proven to make the institution or the business become profitable during the pilot test. The problem of low capacity will be addressed through the training programs of the project. PsAfRD will design and implement value chain markets development programs of various agricultural products to add value to its financial services.

People's Action For Rural Development Inc. (PsAfRD), a not-for-profit, NGO in Papua New Guinea. It promotes community people's capacity building, women's economic empowerment , entrepreneurship, and sustainable land and forest management. The VWBP Financial System was designed by Joseph Pumai and the program team to provide financial and non-financial services to poor village women.

20 people with different technical and managerial backgrounds but PsAfRD in collaboration with the Bank of PNG trained them in Micro-financial Institutional Management.

During the pilot testing period of five years, we have associated with the Bank of PNG, Pacific Financial Inclusion Program, Australian Aid (SPSN), the Microfiance Expansion Project of BPNG and ADB, PNG Banking Institution,and Save Africa. The interactions and training support from these collaborative partners graduated 30 of our employees on various positions which we are now ready to take on the up-scale of the innovation to a larger scope of population.

Our organization is receiving technical support from the Bank of PNG and its Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion, and one-off funds from the European Union, the Australian Aid, and the PNG Government, during pilot phase.

The poor urban women  population are highly enterprising and income generating agents for their households. While migrating and departing from their land and resources, they entirely depend on off-farm informal economic sector for survival. This is a new market to be explored, even though the formal banks think it is characteristically endowed with high credit risk customers. The Village Women's Financial Services Ltd (VWFS) thinks it has the right strategy to explore and financial services in this unexplored market. If VWFS can set systems that reduce credit risk to a minimum low, then it is innovative and has a competitive advantage. This VWBP Financial System is the only system that can do business in risky markets. There are competitors too.

The initial funding will be in the form grant as catalyst funding to activate a new system. When the new system is activated, the system knows how to generate revenues to levels where financial sustainability and financial self-sufficiency levels are reached, thus profitability is maximize. If a donor provides an initial seed fund to reach 5,000 customers (poor women), the system reaches out to new clients based on its self generated profits. The level of out reach is expected to increase per year.

The tribal indigenous  people in the Indo-Pacific region live in tribal communities of populations ranging from 2,000 to 18,000 (Reilly, 2008), clans within a tribal group consist of population from 200 to 1,500. The  Melanesian societies  are grouped into ethno-linguistic tribal groups. A number of tribes speak the same language. There are 2,000 tribal groups in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the biggest country in the South Pacific. These tribal societies dwell in grass or palms thatched bush materials huts. Before contact with white men, around 1800s at the coast, and 1930s in the highlands, there were no modern medicine and health services, no roads and bridges, transport, and telecommunication systems. Development has slowly enabled the tribal people to access modernization and globalization at varying degrees. Access and empowerment to progress and achieve quality life is constrained by the ineffectiveness of the state institutions due to corruption and bad governance. The tribal communities need reformed and re-structured institutional and organizational systems to interact and access modern development institutions and resources. This innovation re-organizes the traditional social, political, and economic systems to cope and adapt to the rapid changes.

Have not selected other.

Green Climate Fund

The VWBP Financial System will integrate climate change based mitigation and adaptation credits into its system to facilitate the rural women to lead in food security and sustainable solar energy advocacy for sustainable forest management and biodiversity conservation. PsAfRD is working on a concept to get it out to the GCF through the NDA.

Global Innovation Fund

PsAfRD has submitted a concept paper to the GIF for consider on the degree of innovation of the idea. As stated, the peculiarity of the innovation is dependent on the capacity of the target population to understand, accept, and adapt. PsAfRD pursues venues for funds to activate the scale-up innovation to establish a 'community of practice' in the target population.

Development Innovation Fund (DIV)

The USAID's division is promoting funding of innovations for large scale development out reach. When we organization in the developing countries attempt to express our ideas, it would be more of community based innovations for change of the target population. May be we can use our new system to change the livelihoods of 1,000,000 households when 1,000,000 participate and change, its positively affects 7,000,000 people.

Not applicable.

The Team will use the prize to conduct market research targeting the market. The research results to design the loan product and tailor it to the needs and specifically economic structure of the target clients. The product development is important and only suits the need of the customers when they actually express what they need. The results from the research will facilitate effective marketing for fund raising.

Not applicable.

The Team will use the prize to conduct market research targeting the market. The research results to design the loan product and tailor it to the needs and specifically economic structure of the target clients. The product development is important and only suits the need of the customers when they actually express what they need. The results from the research will facilitate effective marketing for fund raising.

Not applicable.

The Team will use the prize to conduct market research targeting the market. The research results to design the loan product and tailor it to the needs and specifically economic structure of the target clients. The product development is important and only suits the need of the customers when they actually express what they need. The results from the research will facilitate effective marketing for fund raising.