Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference
Entry Finance: Building the Livelihood Assets and Capabilities of Youth
This brief produced by Equip3 funded by USAID identifies the goal of entry finance as helping to build a more intentional bridge between youth 13-24 and traditional microfinance providers by looking at readiness and access as well as assets and capabilities.
Authors
USAID and EQUIP3Abstract
The primary, and enormously successful, goal of traditional microfinance has been to address the longstanding mismatch between the demand of poor adults (mostly women) for financial services and products, and the capacity of mainstream financial service organizations to supply such products. The goal of entry finance is to fully realize the potential of microfinance by helping to build a more intentional bridge between youth 13-24 and traditional microfinance providers. Entry finance achieves this goal by increasing the readiness of older children and youth to make use of microfinance services (including both savings and credit products), and by introducing new mechanisms and products that make microfinance providers more accessible to a younger clientele. Entry finance is not meant to be a segregated, parallel, set of services, rather it is designed to overlap and integrate within existing structures, and to “graduate” as many young people as possible, as early as possible, into mainstream adult serving programs.
