Strengthening Collaboration and Sustainability of Social Funds through Partner Sharing Session

Jakarta, 10 July 2025 – Education Aid International (EAI) successfully held a Partner Sharing Session under the theme “How to Discern Business Partnerships” at Paragon 9, Community Hub. The event served as a platform for knowledge exchange and strategic alignment among partners, with the goal of fostering sustainable and impactful social fund management.

The session was opened by EAI’s CEO, Tri Mukhlison Anugrah, who introduced the attending partners to each other, highlighting the importance of familiarity and synergy among stakeholders. He also shared updates on key programs, including:

• EduQard, currently undergoing a rebranding to become the Student Revolving Fund

• Co-funding partnerships with RWI and Itqan

• Co-investment initiatives with RWI and ongoing discussions with Kitabisa

This event aimed to encourage partners to strengthen the sustainability of social finance programs. The central discussion theme was “How to Utilize the Social Loan”, with a focus on identifying and building effective, mission-aligned business partnerships.

Two invited speakers shared their insights during the session:

• Farid Nugraha, S.E., CIB, CIO of FundEx, presented a session on Due Diligence Analysis, emphasizing the importance of both caution and trust as foundational principles prior to any technical analysis.

• Ely Haryanti, M.Pd, an academic and experienced banker, also an early EAI partner, shared her journey in supporting the development of social loan programs.

During the interactive dialogue, several partners raised relevant questions:

• Skolla asked about non-technical aspects in financing. Farid responded by highlighting the importance of experience and instinct in assessing financial and operational feasibility beyond data.

• RK raised a question regarding the feasibility of insuring social loan disbursement. The response emphasized that insurance only provides risk sharing, hence partners must still carry out strong internal risk assessments and profit-sharing strategies.

• ItQan opened a discussion around transforming social loans into commercial schemes that can help beneficiaries transition from being recipients (mustahik) to donors (muzakki).

EAI elaborated that EduQard is benchmarked from edu-loan practices in countries like Australia, India, and Malaysia, utilizing discounted tuition margins from universities as a revenue stream to ensure program sustainability.

Challenges surrounding regulation were also highlighted, especially regarding partnership limitations between non-profits and commercial entities. Kitabisa raised a question about how to assist beneficiaries who cannot provide standard documents such as payslips. EAI responded by outlining their efforts in implementing credit scoring and conducting field surveys to assess eligibility and minimize risks.

After the lunch and prayer break, the session continued with feedback and reflections from each partner. The event concluded with closing remarks from the speakers, followed by a group photo session and informal networking.

Through this session, EAI reaffirmed its commitment to building a collaborative and sustainable ecosystem for social financing, ensuring that more underserved communities can be empowered through accessible and responsible funding models.