Putting ‘clients at the center’ is about more than just raising levels of adoption and usage of formal and informal financial services. It is also part of a broader thesis of client-led microfinance which argues that a client perspective to product design and delivery, building financial capabilities and the relationship between clients and operations together contribute to achieving sustainability and scale and are important if a financial service provider is to serve its market effectively.

The value chain approach aims to achieve economic growth with poverty reduction, but there tends to be a poverty “frontier” beyond which value chain development programs struggle to engage. Join Marian Boquiren of SDCAsia and Anna Cuny Garloch of ACDI/VOCA to discuss emerging insights as to how the value chain approach can more effectively be leveraged to “pull” the very poor into markets in more gainful ways and improve their ability to access and succeed in opportunities created in a market system.

The Tanzania Staples Value Chain Project – NAFAKA, implemented by ACDI/VOCA, is one of the 10 active Feed the Future projects in Tanzania. Chief of Party Lee Rosner will discuss NAFAKA’s market-driven, value chain approach to addressing food security concerns in the country, sharing both the challenges and successes encountered during the project’s first year of implementation.

Saving is hard for most people, rich or poor, educated or not. Setting aside even small sums of money on a regular basis requires a conscious trade-off between buying something now in favor of achieving long-term goals, and even the most prosperous struggle to translate this intention into sustained savings. Saving may be especially difficult for poor individuals, as daily needs and family obligations may distract attention from meeting savings goals.