Applying Development Principles

International development practitioners can help communi­ties take development into their own hands in many differ­ent types of programs by incorporating the high performance characteristics used for savings groups.

One example of using these principles is Brazil’s Cistern Program, which catalyzes the problem-solving capacity of rural communities to address the lack of water in the semiarid region of the country, which suffers from severe water short­ages, with highly irregular rainfall throughout the year.¹ In response, the Brazilian government has spent billions of dol­lars to divert the Sao Francisco River to supply farmers with water, but the result has been to take water away from small­holder farmers and direct it to cities and large agribusinesses.²

Smallholder farmers and civil society groups in the north­west semiarid region realized that it was up to them to come up with a workable solution. In 1999, they banded together to form the Brazilian Semiarid Association and devised a plan that was simple, easy to scale, low cost, and driven by the community. Members of the association took it upon them­selves to teach community members how to build different kinds of cisterns and better conserve water. The Brazilian Semiarid Association later partnered with the federal gov­ernment to receive additional funding, and within a decade more than fourteen thousand people had been trained in how to build cisterns, and more than four hundred thousand

Applying Savings Groups Principles to Other Initiatives 137 families had cisterns to provide water for their small farms.³ The top-down approach for addressing water scarcity in this region failed to reach those who needed it most. When the initiative was “in their hands” and led by those who would directly benefit, it achieved its goal.