Bill Gates - Haiti Observer Blog

Haiti's aim for socio-economic development has paved way for both local and international bodies and institutions to cooperate in providing the country and its people different means to attain this. Through technology, these entities have found various innovative ways to assist most especially the poor sector of Haitian society. The Mobile Money initiative, which was launched in the country last 2010 by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), continues to offer promising results.

The Haiti Mobile Money Initiative organized by the Gates Foundation has recently reached a five-million worth of transactions. This resulted in Digicel and Voila, two of the country's mobile network companies, sharing an award worth 3.2 million dollars for this milestone, which marks the final award of the initiative's ten-million-dollar incentive fund. The growing success of mobile money assists Haitians with a more practical and easier way through their mobile phones in taking care of monetary transactions as ninety percent of them do not have bank accounts. Aside from the HMMI, the government has launched two projects involving mobile money called "Aba Grangou" and "Ti Manman Cheri". The "Ti Manman Cheri", otherwise known as "Dear Little Mother", aims to help Haitian youth that are facing extreme poverty.

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