AUXFIN’s holistic approach to community activation Implementation plan for Burkina Faso We want to make interventions that sustain (and not implementing projects). This proposal presents an intervention that is based on community activation, meaning: connecting marginalized people to activate and develop their own communities, aiming sustainability and impact at longer term. Community activation is our approach to do things differently in the development cooperation and it’s a key approach in our strategy (MACS 2023 – 2026). In the communities, we form groups of maximum 50 households (G50) and guide them on using a tablet to get access to finance and other services. G50 groups are self-governed groups based on existing structures in the communities. Key activators are facilitating the groups; these are trained focal points in the communities. In Burkina Faso, Auxfin aims to provide services around the following pillars: 1. Finance (financial literacy, access to finance, savings, financial planning, ...), 2. Work and Income (agriculture, job creation, access to inputs, access to markets, ...), 3. Social (social cohesion, mutual aid, solidarity, peaceful resolution of conflicts, ...), 4. Health (family planning, SSRAJ, hygiene, nutrition, ...) For the development and self-learning of the G50’s, e-coaches will be put in place for the different needs: AgriCoach, HealthCoach, NutritionCoach, FinanceCoach are some of the examples that has been developed. The system is flexible and new modules can be developed based on the needs of the users. They could consider for instance GovernanceCoach and FishCoach to fit the needs of the benefiairies. The platform connects local service providers to enable households to buy fertilizers, agro-chemicals, etc. Purchasing and payment can be done online. Financial institutions (FI) will be included, even rural households can have a bank account. For sustainability purposes, the following criteria will be used in the process: 1. Meaningful for the users (impact) 2. Attractive and understandable 3. Affordable and willingness to pay Auxfin propose to use the activator’s network in rural areas. On the regions on where to start, the project will decide after the inception phase, in which a more in-depth analysis will be carried out. The project proposal fits in the objectives of the embassy on contribute to social and economic inclusion for Burkinabés, to order to help stabilization of the country. The project has a time line of 5 years. It will start supporting the beneficiaries of the existing programmes that are financed by the embassy in Burkina Faso. The project propose to start with Horti+ and CFYE, two projects that are in the pipeline. It will support PSD programmes such as: Dry More (improving value chains in the dry food sector), PacaJef (enabling environment for entrepreneurship), CLE: cultivation of entrepreneurship. And it will support the agriculture sector, farmers, (due to Agri-coach and access to finance) can benefit from it. And: programmes in the skills jobs area (Job Booster SEC and Promesse) can take advantages of platform. The project will start with an inception phase of 6 months. During this period a local office will be made operational, local staff recruited. Agreements with the different NGO’s and service providers will be made and together the implementation plan will be made concrete, including a Risk <(>&<)> Security plan. The implementation will be done in phases: first year, after the inception, is setting up the technical deployment of the platform. The next phase is the implementation of the networks and will start in the vegetable value chain (Horti+)  and the NTFP value chain (CFYE), since these two programmes are not yet approved, in the inception phase, a plan B should be developed.