Connected Women

Location:
Philippines

About the Solution

The Philippines’ 1.3 million sari-sari stores are small neighborhood convenience shops operating from homes to sell daily essentials. Mostly run by women, these stores are economic anchors in local communities. However, these entrepreneurs face thin profit margins, irregular cash flow, and operate by intuition rather than data. Fewer than 15% of store owners use AI tools despite high mobile penetration and widespread ChatGPT use in the Philippines. With 99.5% of the country’s enterprises being micro, small, and medium businesses, ensuring AI adoption among women-led stores is critical to inclusive economic growth.

Connected Women is integrating its human-centered digital training model with the AI-powered Store Insighting Project (SIP) to strengthen women-led sari-sari stores across the Philippines’ 7,100+ islands. Using machine learning, SIP analyzes store transaction histories and generates personalized recommendations on inventory management, product mix, pricing, and demand patterns. Rather than replacing human judgment with automation, Connected Women pairs these AI insights with digital literacy sessions and hands-on coaching, ensuring store owners can understand, trust, and act on the recommendations.

Activating Economic Opportunity

By training women with no technical knowledge beyond basic use of Google, Facebook, and YouTube, Connected Women proves that AI adoption is accessible with an approach of human-centered design. With more than 100,000 women-led stores in their network and a model designed to be replicated across the nation, the solution positions AI as decision support that strengthens rather than replaces women’s business acumen.

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Meet the Activate AI Challenge Awardees

Each solution addresses systemic barriers to economic participation while prioritizing local context, addressing low-resource languages, empowering community leadership, and driving sustainable impact beyond the grant period.

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