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With a little help from my neighbors

SDGs Impacted

The use of digital tools for all kinds of errands and procedures, such as payments, purchases, or the use of applications, is spreading rapidly and takes up an important part of our daily lives. When due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in many places, we were forced to avoid non-essential outings, and banks and public offices reduced their customer service, many of us were able to adapt smoothly. However, this was not true for everyone. We conducted a pilot to test a grassroots innovation searching for alternatives to solve this problem. In collaboration with the municipality of Concepción del Uruguay, we designed and implemented the Con Vos Network. The Network consisted of thirty-two stores of different kinds, most of them located between 1.5 and 2 km from the city center, where neighbors could carry out digital procedures at very low cost with the help of store owners. The Network’s main objectives are to promote digital inclusion, understood as the possibility for people to go online with more things, to achieve greater decentralization of digital procedures, and to boost community markets. To assess the results of the pilot we measured the number of procedures conducted and gathered relevant information about each customer’s profile and their reasons for using the Network. The Network is a model that can be replicated in other territories as well and was highlighted as an example of Community-Organized initiatives in Smart cities by the Handbook of Urban Innovations of UNDP.

Impact / Outcome
The original hypothesis regarding digital inclusion is that the people most affected by the digital divide would be encouraged to complete their procedures online with the help of their trusted shopkeeper. This means that if the shopkeeper in their neighborhood, whom they have known for a long time, would help them to complete these procedures easily, they could continue to do them in this way and even do new online procedures.
Funding sources
Public/Private
Key Metrics
Increase sales by bridging the digital divide
Locations
Latin America, Argentina
Sector
Financial services
Intervention lever
Policy
Operating model
Public-private partnership
Target population
Rural
Year published
01 February 2022

The EDISON Alliance

A World Economic Forum Initiative