Empowering Social Business to Increase Positive Impact on Girls and Women

Project start date: 01/01/2018

Project end date: 01/01/2018

Situation

SPRING Accelerator aimed to drive socio-economic empowerment for adolescent girls across East Africa and South Asia by supporting businesses with scalable, girl-focused solutions. Over five years, the programme impacted 2.5 million girls through 75 ventures in nine countries.

Assignment

SPRING selected Proportion to support 20 social businesses in conducting in-country design research and refining their business models to amplify positive impact on girls and women through a design sprint format.

Approach

Proportion deployed local research teams in Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Pakistan, beginning with a week-long bootcamp in Nepal. There, each business challenged its model with a gender impact lens. Guided by early assumptions, Proportion facilitated deep design research involving interviews, workshops, and prototype testing with stakeholders. A second bootcamp enabled teams to pivot or validate their strategies based on real-world insights.

Results

20 businesses emerged with sharper, field-tested strategies grounded in lived realities. Examples include onboarding farmers into rabbit farming in Nepal, improving mobile money agent models, and enhancing ICT training for women. Proportion’s role bridged global expertise with local insights to drive sustainable change.

This project was commissioned by Proportion Global for the client, SPRING Accelerator and performed by Thomas,a member of the Proportion Global community. If you’ve enjoyed reading this case and want to dive deeper, we’d love to hear from you and we will connect you with relevant designers like Thomas, who worked on this project Contact Us