Bridging Gaps

Our story starts with Malish James, a South Sudanese refugee in Uganda's Bidibidi Refugee Settlement. Exploring the challenges in Bidibidi with Malish and his community, we discovered a problem we wanted to solve: international organizations are cutting food rations, and refugees struggle to afford other essential items like clothes for their children, so they often sell or exchange the little food aid they receive.

Globally, 1.4 billion adults lack banking services, making them ineligible for conventional loans. Almost half of these people worldwide live in Sub-Saharan Africa, concentrated in conflict-affected and rural areas where poverty is the hardest to eradicate.

To address aspiring unbanked entrepreneurs, we introduced a groundbreaking new business model: the first-ever pay-it-forward community microloan, merging charity and microfinance. With Malish as our co-founder, we identified potential entrepreneurs, conducted a co-created pilot, and established our first community loan groups in Bidibidi. Since starting in 2022, we have developed our digital platform to secure donations from the Global North, which are then transformed into microloans in the Global South. As businesses thrive, loans are paid forward to new entrepreneurs in the same community, creating a sustainable ripple effect of new initiatives and independent local financial structures.