49 organisations from 26 countries apply to Round 1 of European Microfinance Award 2024 on ‘Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People’

Round 1 of the European Microfinance Award 2024 (EMA2024) on ‘Advancing Financial Inclusion for Refugees & Forcibly Displaced People’ has closed, having received applications from 49 organisations from 26 countries.

Launched in mid-March, the EMA2024 seeks to highlight organizations active in financial inclusion that help forcibly displaced people (FDPs) build resilience, restore livelihoods, and live with dignity in their host communities.

Forced displacement is a growing global phenomenon, and while media attention may focus on migrants fleeing to high-income countries, the reality is that most forcibly displaced people are internally displaced or find themselves in neighbouring, low to middle-income countries. And with growing global uncertainty and proliferation of the drivers of displacement (including climate change), these figures are likely to increase further.

The financial inclusion sector has an enormous and critically important role to play in supporting refugees and FDPs, meeting their complex financial and non-financial needs across the various phases of displacement, and working with host country communities, policymakers and other actors to address the barriers FDPs face – and that financial organisations face in serving them.

As a result, the EMA team is delighted to have received such a diverse and interesting field of applicants and initiatives, including from 28 MFIs (among them NFBIs & NGOs), 9 banks, 6 non-FSP NGOs, 2 fintechs, 2 social enterprises, and one community-based and one refugee-led organisation.

The EMA team will now commence evaluating these applications against a rigorous evaluation grid with established criteria for both eligibility and innovation. This process will determine which applicants will be invited to participate in Round 2, which itself will then be further reduced to a number passed on to an expert Selection Committee, largely made up of e-MFP and InFiNe.lu members and which will meet in September to choose the semi-finalists and the three finalists. These final three will be evaluated by a High Jury and the winner announced during European Microfinance Week in November.

The EMA organisers would like to thank all the organisations that have taken part in this application round, and we look forward very much to starting the process of learning about what they’re doing to advance financial inclusion for refugees and forcibly displaced people.