The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. Every year, the country suffers from damages and losses brought by natural disasters. On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Haiyan (locally known as Yolanda) hit the country, leaving approximately CAD 17.5 billion of damages.

Extreme weather events bring adverse impacts to Filipino’s, especially women who operate micro, small and medium sized enterprises such as sari-sari stores – small retail shops offering a wide variety of consumer products to the community.  Sari-sari stores are home-based micro-enterprises mostly run by mothers. They play an integral part of Philippine society, not only as a place to purchase household goods but they function as a community meeting place for updates on information and current events. When disaster occurs, the sari-sari store is one of the first places where people go for supplies, yet the stores themselves are ill-prepared to cope with disaster and often experience losses related to property, inventory and business interruption.

The goal of PREMIUM is to provide micro-entrepreneurs specifically sari-sari store owners (the majority of whom are women) with skills to successfully manage and operate their businesses and to become more resilient in times of disaster through the purchase of micro-insurance products. Sari-sari store owners are also provided with better access to financing in order to expand or upgrade their product offerings. Select sari-sari store owners will be trained to become distributors of life and non-life insurance products to increase insurance protection in typhoon affected communities and to create new revenue streams for store owners.