Whether it is refugee and migrant young adults in Peru and Ecuador, or women small-and-medium-enterprise (SME) owners in Kenya and Ukraine, World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) is improving the lives of underserved populations across the globe through its technical assistance projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Advocacy efforts by the USAID/WOCCU Economic Inclusion Project (EIP), which aims to expand financial inclusion, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to migrants and refugees in Peru and Ecuador, this year made it easier for Venezuelan refugees and migrants to open accounts at credit unions.
Those efforts resulted in new Basic Account regulations in Ecuador that ensure a more inclusive financial system by:
- Removing limits on the number of basic accounts customers can open and operate.
- Improving service channels.
- Providing greater flexibility on the forms of ID Venezuelan migrants and refugees can use to open accounts, allowing them to even use expired passports from their country of origin.
Since the change went into effect in early 2024, EIP has led events in three cities in Ecuador to help Venezuelan migrants and refugees open new accounts.
In both Ecuador and Peru, EIP is also helping young adults and women who have migrated from Venezuela.
According to the results of EIPs Study on the Integration of Venezuelan Migrants and Refugees in Peru and Ecuador, Venezuelan young adults are seeing greater financial benefits than any other age group participating in the project.
The study found that while all program beneficiaries saw higher levels of income than non-EIP participants in Peru and Ecuador, Venezuelan adults aged 18 to 29 are earning $487 per month—nearly four times more than their Venezuelan peers not enrolled in the program.
“What we are seeing is that young people are taking more advantage of all the opportunities EIP has to offer, including degree revalidation, job skills training and entrepreneurship programs, and enrollment in formal financial services,” said Oscar Guzman, EIP’s Chief of Party.
With women comprising 76% of the program’s beneficiaries, the results show they are benefiting as well, earning $364 per month versus just $150 for Venezuelan women outside the program. That increased level of pay for women exceeds what men outside of the program are earning—reducing the gender income gap in Peru and Ecuador by 16%.
“One of the reasons we focused on assisting women originally was due to the structural challenges they faced in acquiring job training and launching entrepreneurial projects. EIP will continue to make further strides to level the playing field for women moving forward,” said Guzman.
Women SME owners benefit from lending initiatives
In countries as diverse as Ukraine, Kenya and Guatemala, USAID/WOCCU projects helped women obtain more than 1,000 loans through credit unions or CUSOs that allowed them expand or improve their small and medium enterprises.
A toolkit developed by the WOCCU Technology and Innovation for Financial Inclusion (TIFI) Project in collaboration with partner credit unions led to the distribution of 1,767 loans worth $41 million to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Guatemala. 35% of those loans went to women-led SME borrowers, hitting a high of 46% in Kenya.
Funded by the USAID Cooperative Development Program (CDP), TIFI operated from 2018-24. WOCCU is continuing the work of the TIFI Project and expanding on it in those same four countries through the USAID-CDP Accelerating Growth and Inclusion in Lending for Credit Unions (AGIL4CU) Project (2023-28).
Ukraine is another country where the work of one project that helped women grow their businesses is ending, while another has already begun to continue that mission.
The USAID/WOCCU Credit for Agriculture Producers (CAP) Project concluded in August after eight years of work to increase access to finance for rural and agricultural micro- and small businesses and through credit unions to boost rural and community-based economic growth and resilience in Ukraine.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the CAP Project prioritized assisting women-led SMEs through credit union lending, because many were left to run business on their own or start new ones to generate income.
The CAP Project helped credit unions in Ukraine access its Liquidity Fund, financed by Worldwide Foundation for Credit Unions, to provide 915 loans to women-led enterprises since the start of the war.
The USAID/WOCCU Grow Project (2024-28) in Ukraine is now picking up where the CAP Project left off by addressing the specific challenges of women and other vulnerable populations in accessing financing for business development.
Along with our work through USAID-funded projects, WOCCU is also exploring how credit unions represented by our national and regional trade association members across the globe are expanding financial inclusion to migrants and refugees.
WOCCU in June 2024 released Insights from Credit Unions on Financial Inclusion for Migrants and Refugees.
The report looks at the role credit unions play in supporting migrants and refugees in four countries: Brazil, Ecuador, Poland and the United States.
As we move into 2025 and beyond, WOCCU will continue to look for ways to expand financial inclusion and assistance to the most vulnerable populations through our international projects and the vast network of credit unions we represent across six continents.
