[September 2025 Newsletter] PEI and partners at UNGA80, AI-powered Help Desk, 2025 Engagement Survey results, and more!

At the United Nations, the Government of the Republic of Zambia and PEI showcased the Supporting Women's Livelihoods (SWL) program, PEI beta tested AI-powered solution for support, and the results are in on the 2025 engagement survey!

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September 2025

NEWS FROM PEI

Government of the Republic of Zambia and PEI host Jobs for the Poor at Scale high-level event during UNGA80

On Friday, September 26, on the sidelines of the 2025 UN General Assembly, the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) and the Partnership for Economic Inclusion co-hosted the high-level event Jobs for the Poor at Scale: Country Leadership and Partnership in Action. The event highlighted progress under the Supporting Women’s Livelihoods (SWL) program, part of the Girl’s Education and Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods (GEWEL) Project. Strong evidence of the SWL program’s impact—including a 30 percent reduction in extreme poverty—has driven its scale-up to more than 145,000 women, with plans for a national rollout reaching 200,000 women.  Keynote addresses were delivered by Iffath Sharif (Global Director for Social Protection and Labor, World Bank) and Mainga Kabika (Permanent Secretary for Gender Division, GRZ), with opening and closing remarks from His Excellency Chola Milambo (Permanent Representative of Zambia to the UN). A panel featuring Barnabas Musonda (SWL Project Manager, GRZ), Loli Arribas-Banos (Practice Manager, World Bank), and Doris King (Program Director, Co-Impact) shared lessons on scaling economic inclusion programs, while Permanent Secretary for Planning and Administration Prudence Kaoma confirmed the Ministry of Finance and National Planning’s strong support for the GEWEL project. The event drew wide participation from governments, donors, and NGOs, and received national media coverage in Zambia, underscoring Zambia’s leadership in advancing inclusive jobs and fostering partnerships for future investment.

AI, EI, Oh! Powering up PEI’s Economic Inclusion Help Desk with AI-assisted Solutions

Rising demand for technical support has driven the development of PEI’s latest real-time learning innovation, a beta version of its AI-powered Help Desk 2.0. Since its launch in 2022, PEI’s Help Desk has responded to 250 requests from almost 70 countries, offering World Bank teams Terms of Reference, manuals, case studies, briefs, and tailored advice. This surge in requests shows how vital timely, practical resources are for scaling government-led economic inclusion programs.  Unveiled during the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labor Day’s Innovation Marketplace, Help Desk 2.0 features a user-friendly, AI-powered assistant designed to give busy World Bank teams answers in an instant, direct links to best practices, and smarter navigation of resources. Together with PEI’s intranet Task Team Hub resource site, it promises faster and more accessible support that ensures teams have the tools and roadmap they need to build and scale inclusive programs. Currently being piloted and tested internally, the solution may eventually be extended to PEI’s external repositories.

Stakeholders Weigh in:  PEI’s 2025 Engagement Survey Results  PEI completed its third annual stakeholder engagement survey, with over 200 responses from partners, governments, funders, and World Bank staff.  Ninety-four percent of respondents said PEI influenced their work, most often through evidence, program design, and hands-on implementation support. Two-thirds (67%) found PEI’s activities very or extremely helpful, though technical partners rated them lower at 52%—a finding PEI plans to explore further and improve upon. Overall satisfaction remained strong at 83%, and 89% of respondents confirmed that PEI learning activities address critical operational questions for scaling economic inclusion programs.   Looking ahead, respondents identified youth economic inclusion as the top priority, alongside climate resilience and women’s economic empowerment—clear signals for where PEI’s efforts matter most next.

NEWS & RESOURCES FROM PEI PARTNERS

Credit: Cheryl Djiro / CARE

Scaling Community-Grown Solutions  Aisha Rahamatali, Vidhya Sriram, and Maria Liu argue that community-grown solutions like Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) offer a path to scale only when public systems recognize their value, protect their autonomy, and incorporate them into policies. Examples from governments in Vietnam, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Zambia demonstrate how training facilitators, embedding these models into social protection and, importantly, allocating funds are necessary to scaling local solutions like VSLAs. What lessons can we take from their experiences? Embrace light-touch policies that preserve community agency, enable peer learning, and form broad, flexible coalitions with local capacity and ownership at the center.  Read more >>

Credit:Adeline Nieto / Trickle Up

Beyond Aid: Partnering with Governments and Communities to Drive Change at UNGA80  On the sidelines of UNGA80, PEI Technical Partners Trickle Up and Village Enterprise, with Cisco Foundation, convened Beyond Aid: Partnering with Governments and Communities to Drive Change. Moderated by Doris King from Co-Impact, the panel included local and municipal leaders who addressed the challenges and opportunities of scaling economic inclusion programs through sub-national government systems. The takeaway: NGOs must evolve from implementers to enablers, building innovative and sustainable systems, trust with local communities, and long-term partnerships with governments to achieve lasting scale. Read more >>

Accelerating the Graduation Approach in Urban Areas: A Case Study from Hong Kong  A pilot of the graduation approach in Hong Kong shows how economic inclusion can be adapted to dense urban settings, where poverty is often hidden and shaped by high living costs, informal work, and limited space. The program provided a holistic package—cash transfers, skills training, savings support, coaching, and links to services—tailored for households in public housing estates. Early results demonstrate that even in complex city environments, families improved income stability, built assets, and strengthened social ties. For policymakers and practitioners, this case highlights how graduation-style interventions can thrive in urban areas and inform inclusive social protection at scale.  Read more >>

Credit: IHRB

Agents of a Green Transition  In Gujarat’s salt flats, SEWA has helped women salt farmers shift from costly, polluting diesel pumps to community-owned solar systems, backed by blended finance, government subsidies, and technical training. The initiative has raised incomes by about 30%, enabled zero defaults on loans, and turned workers into solar technicians who install and maintain systems themselves. Embedded in this approach are collective bargaining, gender empowerment, and ecosystem alignment from policy to technology and finance. As a model for scaling climate-resilient economic inclusion, it underscores how clean energy transitions can be anchored in community agency, co-investment, and systems engagement.  Read more >>

Credit: Trickle Up

Why Climate Solutions Are Failing the People Who Need Them Most – and How We Can Change That  Too many climate solutions overlook the poorest despite their extreme vulnerability to climate shocks, warns Trickle Up’s Wendy Chamberlin. Recurring droughts in Kenya, for example, have heavily impacted communities where many households live on the equivalent of less than $3/day. Yet, global climate responses often rely on top-down fixes designed far from affected communities and frequently miss the realities faced by informal workers and women living in extreme poverty, who lack access to resources, technology, or political voice. What is needed, she argues, is a shift toward solutions developed in partnership with local communities themselves that ensures adaptation, and strengthens resilience, agency, and economic inclusion over the long-term.  Read more >>

ABOUT PEI

The Partnership for Economic Inclusion is a global platform that unites non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, research institutions, funding partners, and the World Bank to support government adoption and scale up of economic inclusion programs that empower vulnerable people to lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

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