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.

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

We respect and work with oral cultures to build bridges that help innumerate adults adapt to financial services, both digital and legacy models.

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.