Two and a half billion people worldwide, most of them desperately poor villagers, need a better way to save and to borrow. Even the most innovative banking institutions can’t reach them; savings groups can.
In savings groups, members save what they can in a communal pot and loan their growing fund to each other for their short-term needs. Jeffrey Ashe and Kyla Neilan illustrate how these savings groups form and function and how little “outside” support is actually required for their success. Drawing on decades of Ashe’s personal experience, this book describes how he developed Saving for Change, which leveraged the wisdom and strength of group members to train and establish new groups. This
model has impacted the lives of 680,000 people across five countries.
Savings groups are a “catalytic innovation” that bypasses subsidies, dependency, and high costs while effectively reducing chronic hunger, building assets, and empowering the community. Today, saving groups have 9 million members around the globe—with minimal support, membership could grow to ten times this number.
Jeffrey Ashe draws on his long, distinguished career in international development and his personal experience helping to build savings groups to explain how this simple and powerful approach works. As this book shows, the poor are not too poor to save, there is enough savings potential within a group of twenty to meet most needs, and very small sums can make a big difference. Savings groups are as convenient as meeting under a mango tree in the village, and they are as flexible as the rules group that members design for themselves. They build on existing resources while avoiding the subsidies, debt, dependency, and high costs of other approaches, including microlending.
This model has the potential to revolutionize development programs in many other areas, including health, agriculture, education, and even grassroots political empowerment. "Being organized gives us courage," as one saver said. It is their courage translated into action that explains the success of this "in their own hands" approach to development.
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