The Lab’s strength is our community and, in these exceptionally difficult and uncertain times, we know that community is more important than ever. We feel particularly grateful to work with such an inspiring, committed community of financial innovators and changemakers – many of whom are pioneering responses to the COVID-19 crisis, and its financial impacts on vulnerable people and communities.
To learn about some of these initiatives, and explore how we can draw on the power of community to strengthen our responses to COVID-19, on 23 April 2020 we held our first online community event: Financial Innovation, Community and COVID-19.
The event consisted of a series of short presentations from five members of the Lab community developing responses to COVID19: IncomeMax, Open Credit Network, NestEgg, Turn2Us and Wagestream. We learnt about how Lab community members are innovating to enable workers to access financial support, connect and empower frontline money and debt advice organisations in this unprecedented context, equip small businesses to survive the crisis, and more. Like all Lab events, the convening was participatory with plenty of opportunity for participants to share their input and ideas too.
You can read about the event here and watch a recording here.