MM Community

MM Community is a Myanmar-based crowdsourcing platform that seeks to facilitate local governments in sourcing funds for specific projects via low-interest community loans from local citizens, and donations from international donors and impact investors. We believe this model is a win-win-win-win model for the union (federal) and regional (municipal) governments, local citizens and international donors alike. The crowdsourcing platform promotes inclusive community development in local neighbourhoods and villages in Myanmar. Individuals can crowdfund community projects, with government repayments at project completion. We help governments reprioritize local agendas and budgets in small communities by leveraging residents’ local knowledge and needs. Through building local capacities and raising project cash flow, the model is designed to tackle two key problems in Myanmar: the extreme centralization of government power and the country’s infrastructure investment gap. The initiative has been officially endorsed by the Chief Minister of Yangon Region in Myanmar in April 2018, and has been working closely with a network of local MPs since 2017. Last summer, we were selected to join the University of Cambridge's Social Venture Incubator. We have also been given an unconditional grant from the Hong Kong Government for proof-of-concept. Three small scaled pilot projects were successfully completed in 2018Q1 in rural and urban Yangon with the help of 192 local citizen contributors