Airtel Ghana?s mobile money platform, Airtel Money, adjudged?Best Mobile Money of the Year 2013? at the Ghana Telecoms Awards, has partnered Blessing Basket, a non-profit organization,to provide artisans the convenience and safety of receiving their wages on their mobile phones.
Blessing Basketmodel allows artisans to earn significantly higher than fair trade wages for their products for a given period of time in order to create sustainable financial independence for members of the communities in which it operates.
The project in Ghana has over 1,600 artisans in six communities, namely Nyariga, Zoko, Sumbrungu, Gambigu, Tanga and Awa, all in the Upper East Region. Its head office is in Nyariga with a centre where weavers converge to have their baskets assessed and transported to Accra for export. The weavers are paid a premium price for their baskets as compared to prevailing market prices. The fund is disbursed to the artisans through the Airtel Money platform saving the artisan time and the cost of travelling to collect their money. The artisans are then able to access their fund at any time from the network of Airtel Money agents within the community.
The project also has a girl?s school with a population of about 500 students. The students, between the ages of 12 to 18 years, weave baskets during vacations and after school, proceeds of which go towards supplementing school tuition paid by their parents.
Speaking at the launch, the Director of Airtel Money, Luck Ochieng, educated the artisans on Airtel Money and advised them to take advantage of the platform as it was one of the safest and convenient ways of sending and receiving money.
He explained that Airtel was a platform for long?term business relationships. ?Our goal is to make communication, banking, payments, retail and infotainment affordable and accessible to all in Africa. We are especially excited because of our contribution to the change Blessing Basket is making in the lives of these artisans?, he added.
Prior to the launch, Airtel and Blessing Basket run a pilot programme for the Nyariga community where about 150 participants comprising artisans, students, representatives from the chief?s palace, community youth leaders and other opinion leaders were taken through the fundamentals of using the m-commerce platform.
In another development, Airtel Ghana, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility programme, handed over a borehole to the Nyariga community, one of the communities under the Blessing Basket initiative.
