An innovative microfinance platform concept for women has been developed by a student in Oman after being inspired by Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, known to be the world’s largest microfinance Bank which helped make banking for the poor more accessible.
SWIFT — Sustaining Women in Financial Turmoil — as it is named, was formed in September 2020, when the young founder, Gobhanu Korisepati, a student of ABA Oman International School, began to establish a microfinance social business platform.
He spent over three months in an internship with Grameen Bank to learn how and why the the Bank helped the people by making banking more accessible and wanted to replicate the same by educating his peers in the school.
“I was so much attracted by the concept of microfinancing and wanted to replicate the same here and conducted studies for several months and did an internship with the world’s first microfinance bank, the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh,” an excited Ghobanu told the Observer.
After doing some further research on the socio-economic situation within Oman, he came across a set of statistics, that he believes, would help him in launching the same here.
“I found that in 2020, the female unemployment rate was over 12 per cent in Oman, whereas the global average was just a mere 8 per cent unemployed women whereas the adult literacy rate was over 95.7 per cent.
After a rather awe-struck moment, he realised that micro-entrepreneurship would be a great step in the right direction for the prosperity of the women in Oman.”
Fixed on founding the microfinance institution, he was encouraged by the school which supported the SWIFT initiative.
According to him, the school has been extremely encouraging of all social work, as they believe serving the local community is an essential part of any successful education.
“It is an attempt to educate my fellow schoolmates to understand the concept of microfinance and if possible, give it wings to spread across the schools,” he added.
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