Enhance the socio-economic condition of the poor and middle-class population through financing and developing entrepreneurial skills among the potential.

WAVE’s Community Finance Program has been designed to be comprehensive, approachable, and suitable for various groups of society to provide employment opportunities and promote inclusive economic growth, with a focus on the demands and requirements of the rural and urban middle class and the underprivileged groups in society.  A significant number of families in the community are deprived of making these investments in the right amount and at the right time because they do not have the financial capacity and the supply of capital or credit from public and private banks and financial institutions in the informal sector is very low. Furthermore, without microcredit support, it is very challenging for the underprivileged and marginalized groups in society to obtain collateral-free loans. WAVE seeks to improve economic involvement and financial self-reliance, as well as outreach, coverage, and inclusion through its numerous interventions under this program.  Through this program, we are working to facilitate multifaceted activities including credit, capital formation, skill development, technology transfer, agro-farming, crop diversification, cash crop development, animal husbandry, micro-enterprise development, safe and affordable water and proper sanitation and hygiene for all, the development of essential services and others. Additionally, we are working on agricultural processing, marketing, and value chain development alongside assembling women, youth, farmers, and producers. The credit program includes general borrowers, small entrepreneurs, extremely poor, farmers or agricultural entrepreneurs, individuals or families interested in investing in different components.  WAVE has introduced programs for start-ups and small businesses targeted at assisting and supporting entrepreneurs in their access to financial services as well as their investment in business activities. Ensuring a fair price for the entrepreneurs linking them in the market system, providing those with training and guidance, and improving their skills of business development are important concentrations of this program. Throughout the intervention of this program, WAVE has been promoting economic empowerment and independence which are the most significant factors influencing individual and family well-being.

WAVE continues and expands community finance program to ensure that it increases it outreach geographically and within the existing community it is serving through enhanced inclusion. Community finance plays a vital role towards transforming WAVE Foundation a sustainable institution for local communities. Through its multifaceted interventions under this program, WAVE aims to enhanced outreach, coverage and inclusion, increased economic involvement and financial self-reliance, new and successful businesses in agriculture and other sectors.  In Bangladesh, supply of capital or loan provided by government-private banks and financial institutions in case of informal sector is too little. In this backdrop, collateral free microfinance, a worldwide milestone program developed by the NGOs of Bangladesh contributes in economic development generating self-employment. WAVE implements its Poverty and Hunger Eradication Program to ensure self-employment through promoting socio-economic development of poor and lower-middle class people living in both rural and urban settings. Under this program, 4 major loan products and various sub loan products play important role in agricultural production, livestock development including Black Bengal goat, local transportation, and small to large scale business, enterprises and economic development in different sectors of organization working areas. The program emphasizes development of extreme poor and skill development training for program participants and technical assistance & medical services for their livestock development. In addition to financial services, WAVE intends to ensure integrated development of the program participants through incorporating health and education services along with awareness raising activities on social issues. Savings and micro insurance are one of the major activities along with loan support. Apart from this, WAVE has been working on cluster-based production and value chain development.

In the aim of ensuring sustainable employment, the project is dedicated to increase capacity and productivity of micro-entrepreneurs who are existing beneficiaries under community finance program of WAVE Foundation. Youth from poor, marginalized and ethnic community in urban & peri-urban area in Bangladesh are covered under this project. It engages youth from low-income families and provides occupational based training as apprenticeship. The project is looking forward to providing Risk Management Training to 700 existing entrepreneurs who are affected by COVID-19 and Business Management, Risk Management and Occupational Training to 1300 rising entrepreneurs. Almost 500 youth from low-income family will be trained under 100 Master Craft Persons in informal sector. This project is being supported and funded by PKSF and World Bank. WAVE Foundation has been implementing this project through its 27-unit offices in 12 districts across the country.

The project has been undertaken with the aim of improving access to ‘safely-managed’ water supply and sanitation in the project areas and strengthening sector institutional capacity for water and sanitation. The project has adopted a demand-driven strategy to promote hygienic toilets & water supply system by using lending instruments such as credit facilities along with incentives and conduct Behavior Change Communication (BCC) campaign on WASH that seeks to promote healthy living among the people by improving knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. The project activities focuses on providing training and financial assistance to the Local Entrepreneurs (LE) for developing water and sanitation market system; extending financial and technical services for constructing hygienic toilets and safely managed water supply system at the household level; awareness raising and influencing the community to invest in WASH infrastructure for a better quality of life. The project is being implemented in 8 Upazilas under 5 Districts namely Manikganj, Jhenaidah, Magura, Pabna and Patuakhali through WAVE’s 16 Branch Offices. WAVE is implementing this project from July, 2023 with the financial and technical support from Government of Bangladesh, World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) through PKSF.

Accelerating Sustainable Water and Sanitation Facilities for All-ACCESS supported by Water.org has been complementing to awareness raising and capacity building of community as well as sanitation entrepreneurs also. WASH Loan aims at behavioral change of the community people through promoting safe drinking water and sanitation practices; developing and enhancing the capacity of the WATSAN entrepreneurs to ensure the availability of water and sanitation products; providing the targeted community with affordable financial support for tube-well & sanitary latrine installation and establishing linkage with concerned government line agencies & other institutions for a sustainable sanitation facility.