SEED Access to Finance

SEED believes that schools with access to capital combined with other interventions ultimately increases access to an improved quality of education for students. However, the reality is that it is easier for a tomato-seller in the local market to access credit than for an affordable low-fee private school owner to improve their school. It is even harder for Islamic Schools (based on their faith) to access zero-interest credit. These affordable non-state schools rely heavily on the low tuition fees as their primary or sole source of revenue. As a result, they have to operate with limited financial resources, which makes it challenging for them to expand their infrastructure by adding more classrooms and increasing the number of available seats for students, provide running water installations, gender-separated bathrooms, etc.

Due to perceived financial risk, banks and other formal lending institutions remain reluctant to engage with them. School owners must often either rely on their savings or resort to borrowing from loan shark institutions at onerous rates to make infrastructure investments. This served as one of the basis for SEED creating the Access to Finance intervention for this growing sector. We work to:

• Showcase the funding gap in the sector to attract stakeholders to provide funding required.

• Support financial institutions, government and other stakeholders to develop financial products and interventions for the affordable non-state sector.

• Work with the affordable non-state schools with training and application support to access funding available in the market.