Community health workers who work in remote villages in Bangladesh are now doing double duty, thanks to one of the COVID-19 pandemic’s unexpected side-effects. They are helping tens of thousands of rural women understand the value of mobile money systems, as well as providing them with practical health information.

It came about because, before COVID hit, community health workers were paid through banks that often were far distant from their villages. But the pandemic disrupted banking and transportation. BRAC had to find a new way to get payments to its 50,000 workers, and the solution it developed has huge implications for financial inclusion far beyond Bangladesh.