Count Her In
everyone needs to
manage their finances
My Oral Village is fighting poverty in oral cultures
We Develop
Financial Tools For Illiterate and Innumerate People
Unable to read and write numbers, they cannot benefit from the security and convenience of modern financial products and services. We draw on their knowledge and capabilities to create banking, mobile money and other financial tools that they feel safe and confident using, on their own.
Latest News
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April 15, 2026
My Oral Village announces the completion and public presentation of the Sierra Leone OIM Wiki (SLOW), a free and open source repository for the Salone…
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July 26, 2026
A key milestone is the Roadsigns project was completed yesterday in Waterloo, Sierra Leone, when New Salone Woman Organization, under the guidance of My Oral…
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June 30, 2026
My Oral Village publishes its annual report. 2025 was an excellent year, with important progress made through the successful completion of our first truly national…
About a billion people cannot read these numbers
Our Goal
Financial inclusion for oral people world wide. Every person in the world should be able to safely and independently use financial services.
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THE CHALLENGES
An Invisible Disability?
To a billion illiterate people, everyday items – bank machines, deposit slips and mobile wallet menus are not usable. They mean anxiety, stress and vulnerability to loss and fraud. So they avoid financial services, saving in livestock, crops, jewellery and small stocks of hidden cash, unable to function in the modern economy.
The Poverty Trap
Without being able to use a savings account, it is very hard to get out of poverty. Saving in non-cash forms is very risky due to livestock diseases, crop spoilage and fake jewelry. For families and growing children, these risks have consequences. Their children are at great risk of illiteracy too.
Our Solutions
are designed to make financal services usable.
Savings Groups, Payments, Microenterprise, Savings Accounts, Microcredit
Introducing
ORAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT (OIM)
For digital and non digital applications:
Savings Group or Credit Union Passbooks
Microenterprise Record Keeping
Mobile Wallet Interfaces
everyone needs to
manage their finances
Our Impact
Our Work with Fund for Innovation and Transformation
Spotlight on Partnership
Behind every successful innovation is the guidance of reliable funding partners. My Oral Village has been honoured by the support of the Fund for Innovation and Transformation, a Canadian initiative made possible by Global Affairs Canada. FIT’s funding has been a key enabler of the R&D needed to continuously improve the quality and scope of OIM tools, and to refine our understanding of the powerful links between numeracy, gender equality, and development.
Our Work with Global Communities
Spotlight On Our Work In Action
Micro Entrepreneurs in Rural Kenya
Usable Financial Services
My Oral Village Is Testing Our Solutions in Northern Kenya
On October 1, 2020, My Oral Village launched a 15-month project to test several of our Oral Information Management (OIM) tools among 450 women from four ethnic groups living in pastoralist communities in the arid and semi-arid lands of northern Kenya. The project “Writing a Path Out of Poverty: Testing a Cash Calculator with Extremely Poor Women in Northern Kenya” (a/k/a the ‘Write Project’) tests how our innovative OIM solutions can support the women to build sustainable livelihoods and advance gender equality.
Usable Credit Union passbooks for members in Sierra Leone
About 43% of the adult population of Sierra Leone are classified as ‘literate’ by the World Bank. As low as this ratio may seem, it is sharply lower in rural areas, and among women. Since many credit union members cannot read or write, misunderstandings and disputes easily arise, and managers and staff struggle to earn trust.