Welcome to covid-finclusion.org, a joint initiative between the European Microfinance Platform, the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion, and the Social Performance Task Force. This new blog and discussion forum is specifically focused on the financial inclusion sector’s response to the COVID pandemic. There will be a series of essays from the three organizing partners exploring different topics relevant to the response, as well as guest contributions from key sector stakeholders.
This new site is intended to be complementary to the other resources available, such as the FinDev COVID-19 Hub. The covid-finclusion.org forum will add to these resources by providing a place for dialogue -- we welcome thoughtful posts for the blog. Additionally, readers are welcome to engage in the discussion forum, where anyone can both start threads and post replies on different questions, ideas, or topics -- in a constructive and respectful manner (the forum will be moderated).
As you will see, the site has launched with a kick-off piece, entitled ‘Keeping the Patient Alive’, the first in a series of essays that will adapt Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (described in this context in a 2010 CFI paper, written by Daniel Rozas, entitled Weathering the Storm) and re-frame it for this new global crisis, extracting lessons from previous crises where relevant, and incorporating the thoughts of the founding organisations’ members and friends. We hope you’ll visit the site, contribute to the Forum, and submit original material (to contact@e-mfp.eu) for publication on the blog page.
We hope this site is a valuable new place to coordinate ideas and initiatives as the sector works to address this immense new challenge.
e-MFP
CFI
SPTF