Dear Friends,
How do you measure success? There are the things you can count. The number of people we’ve helped start businesses, save for the first time in their lives, and increase their families’ standard of living. New funders added. New projects initiated. Awards won. And there are the things you can’t count. You just have to listen.
|
We helped 8,185 people in five regions – an increase of more than 25% from 2013 -- start or expand businesses, learn new skills, build savings and assets, and forge powerful social bonds with one another. With about five people benefitting from each Trickle Up business, we reached more than 45,000 people.
|
Our partnership with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
served 3,147 people in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and in Alexandria and Cairo,
Egypt. In
2015, we expect to help nearly 5,000 people through our UNHCR partnership. We are exploring other global partnerships
for similar “technical assistance” projects, with Trickle Up helping design and
manage programs based on our experience reaching the poorest and most vulnerable people.
We continued two innovative projects to explore new ways to support highly vulnerable populations: at-risk children in Burkina Faso and women in India who face domestic violence. In partnership with the Women’s Refugee Commission and the University of Chicago, the Burkina project is studying the effects of Trickle Up’s economic strengthening program on children’s welfare and the impact of adding an education component to combat hazardous child labor and forced marriages. In India, with support from the Ford Foundation, women from 115 Trickle Up savings groups in West Bengal documented and shared one another’s experiences with gender-based violence through a participatory video project that aims to help women confront domestic abuse. In India, we expanded our reach beyond our traditional “ultrapoor” target by providing support to “very poor” women --those living in poverty but not at as deep a level as our traditional target group and always at risk of sliding further into the very deepest levels of poverty and vulnerability. This approach – currently adding 1,800 “very poor” women to 600 “ultrapoor” – gives Trickle Up a greater presence in rural villages, reaching 10-15% of the families in a community. Both groups receive similar business and savings training, with the ultrapoor also receiving Trickle Up seed capital grants.
The MetLife Foundation selected Trickle Up as one of its first grantees for its new $200 million, five-year commitment to promote “financial inclusion” -- helping low-income individuals and families gain access to safe and affordable financial products and services.
|
What
does it
take to accomplish all of this? We’re
proud to say that we did all this with a staff of 35 people – half in our New
York headquarters and half divided among our field offices in Burkina Faso,
Guatemala, and India. We think of
Trickle Up as perhaps the world’s largest venture capitalist, helping foster
8,185 businesses last year and providing capital, training and encouragement
that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for so many people.
As we enter 2015, Trickle Up is poised to make dramatic progress. Through expanded technical assistance work, new funding partnerships, and continued innovation based on the Trickle Up model that has endured since 1979, we look forward to helping foster more than 10,000 businesses this year. We continue to strive to strengthen our impact in every household we reach, with carefully measured results that demonstrate why Trickle Up is a sound investment in the potential of the world’s poorest and most excluded people. |