Financial Promise for the Poor: How Groups Build Microsavings, is the go-to book on savings groups. Click to order. 

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Some blog posts you might have missed…

 

Self-Replication of Savings Groups in Western Kenya by Kuria Wanjau

Mpendulo: Savings in 8 or So Minutes by Jill Thompson 

Proof the Add-Ons Work, Really by Sarah J Ward

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New to Savings Groups?

Over the last twenty years, many people have become interested in helping poor people around the world get good financial services. Mohammed Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, won a Noble Prize in 2006 for helping start a movement that has brought financial services to millions around the world. 

Banks and microfinance institutions are one way to bring financial series to the poor. Savings Groups, managed by the members and based on savings rather than debt, are another solution. In fact, we think they’re such a good solution that they really are revolutionary.

Savings Groups are self-selected groups of 15 to 30 women and men who get together to save and borrow. Rather than go into debt to an external institution, they manage their own savings through transparent procedures and all the money they earn through interest on loans stays in their village, and in their group.

This seven-minute video is a great short introduction to savings groups:

A number of international non-profit organizations work with local partners to train people in villages and cities in how to manage their own savings groups. There are now over five million savings group members in Africa alone, and the movement is also growing in Asia and Latin America. (There are even a few groups in Europe and North America).

Savings Revolution is designed to help you learn more about Savings Groups, and to get involved with the most exciting new approach to bringing safe financial services to people around the world.


Wednesday
May232012

A Practical Approach to HIV/AIDS

A recent study conducted in South Africa investigates the benefits of Savings and Credit Group Membership among rural women affected by HIV / AIDS.
The innovative savings model implemented by SaveAct challenges traditional approaches to HIV/AIDS.  
The model shatters the myth that people affected by HIV/AIDS

Click to read more ...

Sunday
May132012

Keeping it together in Post-Conflict Côte d’Ivoire

In September last year, Sarah Ward of IRC shared an article she had written about VSLAs in Côte d’Ivoire as the villages faced election violence. Sarah told the story of one brave treasurer who buried her group’s metal box moments before she fled her village. When she came back she found her possessions stolen and her house burned to the ground; but she dug through the ashes, and unearthed the metal

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Monday
Apr022012

CARE, Equity and Orange launch cell phone saving group product

I was so excited a couple of weeks ago (March 16) to attend the formal launch of the CARE-Equity Bank-Orange cell phone savings group project in the Nyanza province of Kenya.

We worked with Equity Bank and Orange for six months to develop a joint product for Savings Groups. It was approved the week before the launch, and so far as I know, it’s the first time there has been a unique product designed for savings groups, where groups can save and borrow, using their cell phones, with the same level of transparency they are used to in their regular VSLAs. The new product enables Savings Groups to replace cash completely

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Monday
Apr022012

Savings on a tightrope: three balancing acts

Setting money aside for planned expenditures or for a rainy-day fund is tough if you are poor and you feel like you have a whole back-log of things you’d like to buy today. Saving requires active planning of what expenditures to forego and what saving vehicles to use. The selection of specific saving vehicles is driven by three high-level choices.

The first high-level choice is the balance between liquidity and discipline. Discipline is about making it hard for people to revisit prior savings decisions, whereas liquidity is about having the flexibility to meet changing goals and circumstances.

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Sunday
Apr012012

China to form Savings Groups in Africa

A consortium made up of Shenzhen Development Bank, the Hang Lung Group and Lenovo have announced a major initiative to bring savings groups to Africa on a scale never before imagined.

The group, through a joint venture called Virtual Sharing Resources Applications (VSRA), plans to introduce very low cost savings group kits with illustrated instruction sheets through retail outlets across the continent. They have set ambitious targets of ten million members in the first year, forty million in the second, and one hundred million in the third.

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Sunday
Apr012012

Self-Replication of Savings Groups in Western Kenya

FSD Kenya has just published a short study of savings groups created under the Community Savings and Loans (COSALO I) project, funded by FSD Kenya and implemented by CARE International in Kenya. The survey was conducted in September 2011 among 54 groups representatively selected from about 2,500 groups. 

Among the key findings was that replication was the norm, with the average

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Monday
Mar262012

Secret Savers in the States 

Maria is 33, unmarried and has one child.  She owns her own home.  She is employed as a nanny, and also has a house cleaning business.  She has both a personal checking and savings account.  Luis is 30, unmarried and has no children.  He rents a room from Maria.

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Monday
Mar262012

The Gold Day Savings Club

A Turkish student of mine tells this story:

In April 2007 I was to be married but did not have enough money to fund my wedding. My sister, Gulsuh Helvaci, lent me $2,275 in gold and asked that I repay her in gold as well. Frankly, I was shocked she had the funds so readily at hand.

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Sunday
Mar252012

The Gatwikera Railway Savings Club and The Role of Rewards

In a previous post, I wrote about Rev. Duncan and his clever bank of 1810. Beyond providing an allowance for those out of work, his bank was creative in other ways, pressing into service rewards for specific behaviors.

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Sunday
Mar252012

Is 2012 The New 1810?

Recently, while searching for examples of how banks may have helped customers level lumpy cash inflows into even cash outflows, I found this:

“When a depositor was unable to work the bank granted him a weekly allowance out of his own savings.”

The quote caught my attention

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