Group news / Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation, Grameen Trust and Yunus France join forces to support female entrepreneurship in Senegal

WORKING EVERY DAY
IN THE INTEREST OF OUR
CUSTOMERS AND SOCIETY

Tuesday 2 April 2024

Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation, Grameen Trust and Yunus France join forces to support female entrepreneurship in Senegal

Professor Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, member of the Board of Directors of the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation and Chairman of the Grameen Trust, made a special visit to Paris to sign a two-year partnership agreement with Véronique Faujour, Executive Director of the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation, and Yoan Noguier, Director of Yunus France, aimed at implementing the NOBIN programme in Senegal.

This innovative programme, launched by the Grameen Trust in Bangladesh in 2013, helps entrepreneurs turn their plans into reality. Currently running in two working-class neighbourhoods of Dakar, Senegal, where it is helping 2,500 people, it has accelerated the launch of 250 businesses in the space of three years.

The programme planned for Senegal will help women who lack the necessary financial resources to bring their ideas to life and start their own business. As well as teaching finance and entrepreneurship to boost entrepreneurs’ skills, the programme plans to invest micro venture capital of up to €5,000 and give entrepreneurs the support they need to be able to access the formal economy.

This new social entrepreneurship initiative is aligned with the Foundation’s 2025 aims of innovating to better support women and vulnerable young people and cooperating more broadly by forming new alliances.

* The Grameen Trust is a non-profit non-governmental organisation established by Professor Muhammad Yunus in 1989 and committed to the cause of reducing poverty. It uses microcredit as a tool to combat poverty, following the approach adopted by Grameen Bank.
Yunus France, founded by Professor Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, works to combat poverty by making financial education and entrepreneurship accessible to all.

On 26 March 2024, Club Innov’Acteurs brought together around a hundred members of Fédération Nationale du Crédit Agricole, cementing its status as a key annual event for the Group’s innovation community. This important gathering was an opportunity for innovation champions from subsidiaries, entities and Regional Banks not only to share their experience and talk about issues of common interest but also to choose the most promising innovative projects of the past year.

Find out more

Crédit Agricole d’Ile-de-France has published its Integrated Report. To ensure its communications are aligned with its societal and environmental commitments, the Regional Bank has for the first time created a dedicated website developed in accordance with sustainable design principles. Other new features in this year’s report include an analysis of key societal trends and how the Regional Bank is responding to them, a matrix of corporate social responsibility challenges and achievements covering both the Regional Bank and its stakeholders, and a business model presented in the form of a sustainable value creation model.

Read the report

For the 15th edition of French charity mountain event “Glisse en Cœur”, Group employees turned out in force for the 24-hour ski relay. Crédit Agricole des Savoie, a longstanding partner of the event, was this year represented by three teams. Crédit Agricole Group Infrastructure Platform and Crédit Agricole Technologies et Services joined the Greater Annecy area team. They came seventh out of a total of 79 “corporate” teams taking part in the event.

Find out more

The “2023 Regional Bank Transition Awards” have been published. This report sets out Regional Bank initiatives in support of climate transition, social cohesion, health, regional development and the agricultural and agri-food transitions. A judging panel selected three winners and employees and directors voted for a “people’s choice” award. Applications for the 2024 awards are now open.

See the overview

Critical thinking in 2024

According to a recent survey*, critical thinking is reflected in three complementary attitudes: how we think and argue, how we seek out information and how we discuss and debate. It appears to be more developed in the humanities than the hard sciences (67% vs. 47%) as well as in the three quarters of French people who find professional and academic experience particularly stimulating. On average, French people seek out information from five sources, with the internet (71%) and television (67%) coming in ahead of radio and friends and family (41%). Meanwhile, a majority of French people (63%) discuss scientific and societal issues with their friends and family and 20% favour social media as a venue for discussion and debate.

* Survey of 2,004 people representing the French population conducted by OpinionWay for Universcience and published on 27 March.

€897 a month

That’s how much additional income French people think they ideally need to achieve financial well-being, according to a survey carried out by Observatoire Société et Consommation for BforBank. For the first time, BforBank measured the idea of financial well-being, mainly based on the feeling of being in control of one’s budget thanks to having a steady income (93%), not being overdrawn (91%) and being able to independently manage one’s savings and loans (87%). The survey shows that only four out of every ten French people feel they have achieved some level of financial well-being and suggests that, apart from additional income, a better financial education might improve people’s sense of financial well-being.

Find out more

VIDEO

Banque Immo: a project taking shape at Crédit Agricole Atlantique Vendée

Banque Immo is one of the Regional Bank’s most transformative projects. It aims to add real estate services to the Bank’s service offering so that it covers every need connected with customers’ property plans: buying or selling a home, securing finance, insuring a home, etc.

Launched in 2022, the project gathered momentum following a key decision in early 2023: to host advisors from the Square Habitat network in the region’s branches. More than a dozen branches have already welcomed Square Habitat advisors. This partnership is set to expand in 2024, with a target of covering 25-30 branches in total, which would more or less double the size of Square Habitat’s network in the region.

Synergies between the two companies have immediately borne fruit, with a 27% increase in the number of recommendations between the Regional Bank and Square Habitat Atlantique Vendée in 2023, rising to 70% since the beginning of 2024 (based on data to end February).