Friendship Bridge's mission is to provide microcredit, education, and health services to Guatemalan women so that they can create their own solutions to poverty for themselves, their families, and their communities.<br><br>Our vision is of a world in which empowered women choose their own path. Friendship Bridge (FB) has designed our Microcredit Plus program to ensure that it is accessible, relevant, and resonant to our target population -- women. We offer microcredit, education, and health services only to women, and we work in the rural areas using the local indigenous languages (of which there are over 20).

Empowered women choosing their own path.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Responsible Growth: Strategic targeting to acquire new clients and geographies, improved retention rates, and expanded reach and depth of our programs and services.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Two: Innovation and Technology: Be a nimble, responsive, and learning org that's quick to respond to client and market needs. New technologies will allow both Friendship Bridge and our clients to prosper.

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Describe an investment in leadership

Friendship University is an online, opt-in, continuing education platform within our intranet that provides opportunities for employees to further their understanding of organizational roles and needs, in order to reach our objectives. We have also laid the groundwork for a skills development partnership in order to provide worthwhile employment to local youths with the skills needed to meet these objectives and provide a unique professional starting point for young women in rural Guatemala.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

We have recently expanded our in-country marketing efforts through local and national channels to feature our mission and communicate the opportunities we offer. We partner with other orgs to disseminate products and services donated in-kind, and we work to partner with local communities by being an inclusive place to work focused on social impact; creating positive generational change and community transformation for clients, their families, and Friendship Bridge employees.

Guatemala had its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on Friday, March 13th, 2020. Immediate lockdowns and other preventive measures were put into effect. Over the course of the weekend, our staff moved out of their offices and into their homes in order to work remotely and find safe ways to support our clients. Starting Monday, March 16, our staff rallied together to make phone calls to our clients in multiple indigenous languages to ask what they were experiencing, what we could do to support them, and how much they, and people in their community, knew about COVID-19. We then fast-tracked the launch of our developing intranet, Mi Puente, in order to keep homebound teammates connected, learning, and focused during lock down. Non formal education continued via phone calls and videos in order to educate clients around health, safety, and resources during lockdown (including how to take advantage of a 2 month grace period we offered all clients) Health for Life program shifted to tele health services with a call center staffed with nurses who made outbound calls with critical health information and were available for any client to call for information or guidance around COVID-19 or other chronic illness. Preliminary results show that clients are more willing to participate in health services since 2020, so we started offering private home visits from nurses for clients as well, and have seen a 27% increase in demand in 2021. Handmade by Friendship Bridge developed cloth face masks for clients to make and sell both locally and internationally, and launched Live shopping events- making the most of the global turn to e-commerce and leading to a sales increase of 6.5 times that of 2019 - often providing the sole employment for these clients over the summer of 2020 We raised over $65k in 60 days to feed 15,000 people- an enormous undertaking facilitated by partnerships, such as Unispice and Procter and Gamble.