Pollinate Group works with marginalised communities living in extreme poverty in India and Nepal who have been overlooked by most other development actors. Since 2012, our work has shown that with skills and support, women living in extreme poverty are able to access dignified employment and improve their quality of life. Close to 100% of our entrepreneurs have reported increases in their levels of self-confidence, skills and income as a result of their work with us, and have brought clean energy access to over 700,000 people. Over the next two years, Pollinate Group plans to enhance and transition our successful and proven women entrepreneurship model to scale in order to reach 1.5 million more families with clean energy access. We plan to do this through two innovative approaches.
Firstly, we will add a new digital training platform and sales management application to our offering for women entrepreneurs to enable them to leverage digital technology to access training content any time, and any number of times, increase their sales, better manage their inventory, and make cashless transactions to customers. Secondly, we will partner with local NGOs to recruit more women into our network from communities in order to scale our women entrepreneurship model and reach more women from marginalised communities across India and Nepal. Through these approaches, we will be able to equip many more families to move out of poverty over the long-term.
Over the next two years, we aim to achieve the following outcomes:
Pollinate Group has a rigorous monitoring and evaluation system and well-developed impact framework which we have used to assess the impact of our work with our women entrepreneurs, customers and on the environment over the last 5 years. Our methodology has been developed in conjunction with Acumen’s Lean Data approach as well as the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor. We use both qualitative methods (such as interviews and surveys) and quantitative methods (such as sales data) to measure our impact. We will share data and lessons learned from our project with the global communities which we are part of (such as the UNDP Business Call to Action) to help other organisations use technology and partnerships to scale their work with women entrepreneurs/bring life-changing products to low-income communities. We will also share our findings with the general public through social media posts, our blog, our Annual Reports and biennial Impact Assessment reports that are published on our website.
The gender lens makes perfect sense. It reflects the kind of due diligence framework I have observed time and again in the asset management world.
Also known as Australian Women Donors Network (ABN: 28 141 197 471), Australians Investing in Women is a registered charity endorsed by the Australian Tax Office as a deductible gift recipient (DGR1) under a special listing, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.