In the article titled How Blockchain Can Be Used to Promote Gender Equality, Denelle Dixon, CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation, discusses the power of blockchain to empower women and highlights the work of hiveonline.
With spotlight on women for International Women’s Day on March 8th, the article looks at how blockchain be used to drive financial inclusion for the benefit of women worldwide. In particular, women internationally are less likely to have access to financial services. However, when women are included in the financial ecosystem the benefits can not be understated- for economic growth, building resilience, and fostering livelihood development.
Acknowledging the challenges that women face in gaining access to financial services is one thing, but working to bridging the gap is another. This is where hiveonline comes in. hiveonline utilizes blockchain to boost financial access and reach traditionally unbanked communities through the CARE Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) program.
VSLAs are in short community savings groups. The members, most women, meet periodically to pool their savings and provide loans to one another in areas where traditional financial services either don’t reach or are deemed too costly. While the initiative started small, today these groups reach 6.7 million people in the CARE network alone- yet to date VSLAs are broadly isolated from the broader financial ecosystem. hiveonline is working to change this. The Dixon summarizes:
“Recognizing the barriers individuals, especially women, have to traditional finance, hiveonline uses blockchain to bring these VLSA transactions online, creating an immutable and accessible record of the participants’ activities, which creates a financial history that can be shared with financial institutions to create access to better credit, insurance and savings products.
Hiveonline builds a bridge between informal financial communities, composed of the under- and unbanked like women, and the formal financial system. That’s the power of blockchain – financial services and the world’s financial infrastructure can be connected in a way that creates equitable access”
hiveonline is committed to driving impact, promoting gender equality, and supporting communities and microbusinesses worldwide through access to financial services.
Read the full article on Coindesk: https://www.coindesk.com/how-blockchain-can-be-used-to-promote-gender-equality