Today’s Revolutionary 

 
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Savings Groups are catching on in Europe and North America.

Follow this movement, and maybe get involved yourself.

Start by reading the Northern Lights page of Savings Revolution.

Then, if you like, contact us below, and we can talk about how you can form your own groups. We’ll put you in touch with someone who can help you do that!

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    Favorite Sites

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Financial Promise for the Poor 

    Financial Promise for the Poor: How Groups Bulld Microsavings is your go-to book on savings groups. Its contributors are authors you often read in this blog. It covers current innovations in microsavings happening around the world.

    Also, don’t miss…

    Savings Groups at the Frontier, the book inspired by the 2011 Savings Group Summit!

    Buy in UK or US.

    Here are some other sites that Kim and Paul read, that we think you might enjoy.

    The SEEP Savings Led Working Group site. Congratulations to SEEP for putting together this comprehensive, easily accessible go-to site on savings groups. Check out their library, their report on outreach by country, and lots of other goodies.

    Making the Road - a blog by Bill Maddocks. “Through honesty, courage and persistent inquiry we learn the way forward as development practitioners and human beings.” Bill brings rich experience not just with development work, but with life, to these discussions. 

    Village Finance Blog. Brett Hudson Matthew’s thoughtful posts are grounded in an understanding of oral cultures, history, and social dynamics. Recommended for anyone trying to understand what’s really happening in savings groups. 

    Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at UC Irvine. “Its mission is to support research on money and technology among the world’s poorest people. We seek to create a community of practice and inquiry into the everyday uses and meanings of money, as well as … technological infrastructures”. ‘Nuff said.

    David Roodman’s Microfinance Open Book Blog. David Roodman combines intelligence, honesty, and a sense of humor. He attempts to bring intellectual rigor to the analysis of the impact of financial services, and isn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers in the process.

    Clean Air, Bright Light. This site by Savings Revolution co-founder Paul Rippey contains useful information about lessons learned in using savings groups to promote clean lighting. Still in development but check it out anyway!

    The Evidence Project. Chris Dunford was CEO of Freedom From Hunger for many years and probably more than anyone helped FFH earn a reputation of being willing to look closely at what they were doing, and whether they really were meeting people’s needs. Chris continues that role now as a blogger…

    Center for Financial Inclusion. CFI supports traditional microfinance to become more client friendly, more inclusive, and generally smarter. They have a long-term vision for the sector, and the blog attracts many good writers and thoughtful comments.

     

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    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
    May222013

    Trust made easy

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateWednesday, May 22, 2013 at 10:19AM

    Yesterday I had a delightful lunch with Jean Claude Rodríguez-Ferrera Massons of ACAF and Puddle, and Jose Quiñonez of the Mission Asset Fund, two wonderful people full of exciting ideas. What a pleasure - I knew them both a bit through the internet but had never met them in person. 

    At one point, I asked Jean Claude how he dealt with loan approval in his on-line puddles. He replied, “Oh, there is no procedure. Loan approval is already done when you form the group. If you invite someone

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    Tuesday
    May212013

    Shoe wars

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateTuesday, May 21, 2013 at 10:06AM

    The Center For Financial Inclusion blog has a lively exchange reprising the debate about formal v informal financial services, at the Extreme Inclusion conference at the Fletcher School on 2-3 May.

    First, Beth Rhyne makes her pro-bank pitch here, to which I added some acerbic dissing of Big Finance, which was apparently not sufficiently acerbic for John Gitau.

    Then Jenny Aker argues eloquently for the informal side here, leaving the formalistas so devastated that they haven’t yet mustered a reply.

    The reference to shoes? Sorry - You’ll just have to read the blog!

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    Friday
    May172013

    Now, THAT'S a banking procedure!

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateFriday, May 17, 2013 at 11:48AM

    Thanks to Louise Smith who sent a link to the site of World Renew, an organization I had never heard of. Sorry, World Renew! The site has a great promotional video from Malawi. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, scroll to about 1:05 minutes into it, where there is a very lively savings group meeting. I love the infectious energy, and the fact that the person who opens the box apparently has to keep dancing the entire time. Now, THAT’s a banking produre!

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    Tuesday
    May142013

    Andrew Oerke 1932-2013

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateTuesday, May 14, 2013 at 1:06PM

    I just heard from friends that my old boss Andy Oerke had died suddenly, at 81. Andy was the head of Partnership for Productivity (PfP), one of the pioneer NGOs in micro-credit. I’ve never known anyone quite like him. One short anecdote might give a sense of who he was:

    In about 1984, I was working at the PfP home office in Washington DC. It was, to say the least, an informal office. We had casual Friday seven days a week. One day my wife came by for lunch, and brought my daughter Caitlin, then about two years old. We enjoyed a nice meal of leftover spaghetti, which Caity ate as a two-year-old should, spreading the food on her clothes, our clothes, and the floor. 

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    Sunday
    May122013

    Table Banking

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateSunday, May 12, 2013 at 2:45PM

    I just encountered the term “table banking”, which I’d never seen before. I couldn’t figure out what it meant from the context, so I googled it, and found this reference on the site of Grace Life Ministries, a Christian NGO in Eldoret Kenya: “In addition every member contributes towards the pool monthly. We employ TABLE-BANKING for accountability and fast transactions. Table-banking here means all the money transactions are done at table before the members.”

    I like the associations of the term. “Putting your cards on the table” is an expression from card games that means “to tell someone honestly what you think or what you plan to do”. That sounds good! And, of course, tables are places around which families and friends meet to talk and eat together.  

    Has anyone else heard this term? Do you practice Table Banking? Do you know where it came from?

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    Wednesday
    May082013

    It's the management, silly!

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateWednesday, May 8, 2013 at 9:42PM

    Here’s a simple observation that can make a big difference.
    I’ve seen savings group programs of most of the big international NGOs. (You know who I mean.) They all have some good programs and some not so good programs. The approach - VSLs, SILCs, Saving for Changes, CBSGs - are not the determining factor in quality.
    Nor is the region the determining factor: I’ve seen good programs living beside bad programs in the same country.
    So what makes the difference? I’ll bet dollars to donuts that it is above all the

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    Thursday
    May022013

    2nd Live Blog: Extreme Inclusion Conference - James Lawson

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateThursday, May 2, 2013 at 7:41AM

    More from Extreme Inclusion Conference: James Lawson, born in 1928, is a theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the American Civil Rights Movement. His work in civil rights has been about “extreme inclusion”, albeit in a different realm than financial inclusion. I applaud the conference’s decision to include him on the agenda: it is such a refreshing contrast to the sometimes sterile discussion of savings simply in terms of “financial services”.

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    Thursday
    May022013

    1st Live blog of the Extreme Inclusion Conference

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateThursday, May 2, 2013 at 6:28AM

    Here are my impressions from the first session at the Extreme Inclusion Conference at the Fletcher School, happening right now. The morning debate has two illustrious teams, one arguing for formality, and one arguing for informality.

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    Friday
    Apr262013

    A little balloon bursting

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateFriday, April 26, 2013 at 8:12AM

    I want to take a moment to follow Larry Reed’s excellent advice at SG2013. Larry used nicer words than “Don’t believe your own propaganda”, but that was part of his message to the Savings Group community. 

    So, in a spirit of revolutionary self-criticism, let me point out one area where I think we savings group people need to tone down our rhetoric.

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    Sunday
    Apr212013

    What we need to ask about micro-insurance

    AuthorPaul Rippey | DateSunday, April 21, 2013 at 9:44PM

    Micro-insurance is hot, as NGOs and multilaterals work with insurance companies to encourage people, including savings group members, to buy insurance policies for health, agricultural production and other things. Absent from most of the discussion is any mention of pay-out or loss ratios.  It’s good to understand these things. 

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