Support mobile technology to monitor and evaluate programs for women in Guatemala to start businesses, form savings groups, and plan for the future as a pathway out of poverty. 

Why we care: Trickle Up is committed to working with the poorest.  In Guatemala, we work with women in indigenous communities that struggle to meet basic household needs. 

How we’re solving this: Creating innovative mobile data collection tools to monitor and evaluate programs that improve the economic status of women. 

Trickle Up provides training, coaching, and financial tools to the poorest and most vulnerable in rural communities of Guatemala to help them build better futures for their families.  Guatemala has the fourth worst malnutrition rates in the world and in the communities where we work, between 50% and 75% of children under five are stunted.

Our evaluation data from 2012 shows that after participation in our programs:

  • All women are contributing to their household’s income vs. 28% at the start of the program.
  • Women double their household average monthly consumption of protein-rich meat, chicken and fish, increasing from three to almost six times a month.
  • The number of participants who have savings that would cover their household expenses for more than a week more than doubles, from 32% at baseline to 79%.

Trickle Up measures the effectiveness of our work with robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems. Our M&E helps us accurately identify the very poorest, informs program development and design, and demonstrates our effectiveness in positively improving the lives of the participants and families we reach.  

We currently use 11 data collection instruments on the ground. By providing our field workers with mobile phones and training on mobile data collection, Trickle Up can increase the efficiency of these processes, improve the quality of our data, and support real-time decision making. Going mobile will also position the organization better for programmatic experimentation with mobile banking and phone-based coaching.  

To upgrade our M&E systems in Guatemala, we need to purchase the equipment, hire a programmer and train our staff.  Going mobile will enable us to better serve our participants, track their progress in the remote, rural areas where we work, and ultimately enhance the economic status of women in their communities.