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> Posted by Tara Kedia, Campbell Miller, Gurveen Chadha, Ryan Tincher, Waritorn Earth Chariyawattanarut

Tara Kedia, Campbell Miller, Gurveen Chadha, Ryan Tincher, Waritorn Earth Chariyawattanarut (L-R)

The Paganucci Fellows Program is a summer internship for Dartmouth students, hosted by the Tuck School of Business. Under the guidance of Tuck faculty, Richard McNulty and Courtney Hurley Pierson, the program empowers five Dartmouth undergraduates, who wish to make a difference in the world, with the unique opportunity to utilize resources at Tuck to support a social enterprise. The stated goal of the program is to “support Tuck’s efforts to study complex social issues and the ways in which businesses can create positive social and financial value; in effect, the ‘double bottom line’.”  As a team, students pursue a global development consulting project to fuel passion for international development and to acquire skills for future endeavors in social service.  The 2011 Paganucci Fellows Program selected a social and economic innovation that seeks financial inclusion currently hosted by the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION: FAB (Financial Access at Birth).

FAB is the brainchild of Bhagwan Chowdhry, a UCLA Anderson Professor of Finance. Rosita Najmi, FAB’s Program Manager, introduced us to the Financial Access at Birth (FAB) model, gave us context for the assignment, and provided workshops on strategy, country analysis, research methods, and more. FAB emerged from the concern that more than half of the world’s adult population—2.7 billion people — lacks access to formal financial services, as seen in this map created by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. Part of the team’s assignment is the preparation of a feasibility study for a pilot of the FAB model in Ghana, and the process involves defining key questions that the FAB model must consider prior to implementing a pilot, whether in Ghana or elsewhere.  Other efforts include the development of a communication strategy for the launch of a new website and August 28 cameo in the final season of the popular HBO television series Entourage. Finally, the team is supporting the strategy and creation of preliminary invitation lists for the global consultations that FAB hopes to soon launch. Read the rest of this entry »