The Gojo Foundation (hereafter “the Foundation”) will carry out a research project together with the Oralizing Financial Diaries Project (a financial diaries project for non-literate people), which is being run in Bangladesh by My Oral Village, an organization working to improve the financial literacy of non-literate people (including those who cannot read numbers).

The Foundation was established with the mission of funding, and conducting research on, innovative solutions that improve the lives of people who are not adequately served by ordinary for-profit companies. The Oralizing Financial Diaries Project was approved as an initiative that tests one of the hypotheses underlying the Foundation’s criteria for selecting activities: “Importance of Qualitative Research: Insights gained from field visits and deep-dive interviews are the basis for problem solving, and data is only meaningful with these insights.” It is the Foundation’s first research project. We are currently accepting donations from those who support it.

For details, please refer to the presentation materials here.

We also held a webinar on March 9, 2023, from 7:00 p.m. (Japan time), which introduced the project and reported on the Foundation’s field visit to Bangladesh. You can view it at this link.

About My Oral Village

My Oral Village (MOV) is a Canadian NGO founded in 2011 by Brett Matthews, a British national. It works to build systems that allow people who have been excluded from financial inclusion (because they cannot read, write, or count) to use financial services. So that people who cannot read or write can complete the entire interface of using a financial service through spoken (audio) data, MOV works on software development and other technology implementation, and it also supports efforts to raise financial literacy and money management skills. Combining photographs, easy to understand icons, stories, and other elements, it uses a system of Oral Information Management (managing information through spoken or audio data) to develop passbooks, ledgers, mobile wallets, and similar tools.

About the Financial Diaries Project

Financial diaries are detailed, long-term studies of household cash flow. By having households keep account books, detailed information about how they manage their money (income and expenditure, savings, and borrowing) is converted into digital data and analyzed. This helps to develop better financial services by revealing households’ actual living conditions and financial behavior, and it also contributes to improving financial literacy through feedback.

Challenges in financial inclusion for non-literate people

There are one billion non-literate people, mainly in developing countries, and most of them are among the lowest-income groups in their countries. Financial diaries projects to date have targeted literate people, and none have targeted people who cannot read or write. We believe that a project aimed at non-literate people is necessary in order to deliver financial services to everyone.

Aims and outline of this project

Funding

The Foundation is accepting donations to support this project. The fundraising target is 5 million yen.

Method

Using tools designed for non-literate people, the project will create and analyze financial diaries and conduct interview surveys through a third-party research organization, in order to test the following hypotheses:

• Even people who cannot read letters or numbers will use a household account book if they are given the right tools.

• Beginning to keep a household account book changes the economic behavior of non-literate people.

• The economic behavior of low-income people who cannot read letters or numbers is broadly the same as that of other low-income people (in other words, services developed for low-income people will benefit non-literate people directly as well).

Implementing organization

My Oral Village (MOV)

(joint research with MicroSave Consulting and the Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project)

Project period

Approximately 10 months

A request for donations

If you agree with the aims of this project, please fill in the donation form. As the intended use of your donation, please select either “Use for grant activities and foundation operating costs (if you would prefer a ratio other than 50:50, please specify below)” or “Use for grant activity costs.”

Donation Form

Please note that, as we are a general incorporated foundation, donations from individuals do not qualify for the charitable donation deduction when filing income tax. Donations from corporations may be recorded as deductible expenses up to a certain amount.

Future activity reports

We will send an interim report around summer 2023 and a final report during 2023. We will also hold a final briefing session on Zoom together with Brett Matthews, the founder of MOV.

Thank you very much for your support.

Taejun Shin