Notes
Introduction
1. OECD, “Aid disbursements to countries and regions.”
2. Rutherford and Arora, The Poor and Their Money, 41-42.
3. US CIA, The World Factbook.
4. Allen, “Savings Groups Global Outreach.”
5.
Vinod Parmeshwar, who was to become my deputy director and who took the lead on developing the systems that ensured that the program ran smoothly, and Mamadou Biteye, who was then in charge of Oxfam America’s programming in West Africa and who was later to direct the regional office for West Africa for Oxfam America and later Oxfam Great Britain. Kathleen Stack along with Edouine Franςois of Freedom from Hunger, Vinod, and Mamadou trained the local staff. Freedom from Hunger and Oxfam jointly developed the training manuals and training protocols.6. Coulibaly, “Saving for Change.”
7. Salimata Coulibaly interview.
Chapter 2
1. “Solidarity, or benkadi, is a widespread term used in Mali (and by far the most common name chosen by Savings groups).” BARA and IPA, Final Impact Evaluation, 119. Benkadi directly translates to “togetherness is sweet.”
2. Approximate currency conversions from 2012-13.
3. “Oral accounting has been a successful mechanism to assure transparency for all members, and allows for financial management by the group even when more complex systems such as multiple shares are introduced.” BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Savingfor Change in Mali, 15.
4. Several sources discuss this contrasting aspect of emergency loans. They are not private, because members must ask their group for money. However, they are more discreet (and reliable) than begging or asking family, and many members value this aspect of Saving for Change very highly. See, for example, Bermudez and Matuszeski, Ensuring Continued Success, 15-16.
5. BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali, 86.
6. “Women perceive Saving for Change as a buffer against shock.
Loans are occasionally used for consumption emergencies and emergency loans are in fact prioritized by the group and in many cases are repaid without interest.” BARA, Operational Evaluation of Saving for Change in Mali, vii.7. “For many women, the mere presence of a program that validates their economic struggles and establishes a buffer against risk is enough in itself to motivate them toward savings and credit where previous systems did not.” BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali,16.
8. “Most households of any type will run out of the most important staples (millet, sorghum and rice) at some point during the year.” BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali, 64.
9. “Husbands of members also assist members with loan reimbursement under certain conditions, such as sickness or business failure, that disable a member from repaying her debt.” BARA, Operational Evaluation of Saving for Change in Mali, 51.
10. “While many women take loans for petty enterprises and commerce, they tend to co-mingle the profits. These enterprises are thus frequently decapitalized as funds are diverted to meet immediate household needs. While this leads to a pattern of repeated loans to sustain the same activity, such activities rarely grow under these conditions. Even in areas where Saving for Change has had a longstanding presence, women are by and large taking out loans for the same activities as when they began the program. The few women we observed who have been able to realize transformative economic growth through Saving for Change enjoyed relative wealth and stability before the program arrived.” BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali, 89.
ιι. Description of the animator’s role and the training program drawn from Parmeshwar interview and Freedom from Hunger and Oxfam America, Saving for Change Formation of Savings Groups: Animator’s Guide.
12. BARA and IPA, Final Impact Evaluation, 13.
13. “The two keys to group survival are women’s confidence in themselves and in the group, and their willingness to make things work.
Confidence comes from knowing Saving for Change content; having a capable individual—committee member or RA— to guide the group; and/or experiencing an extended period without animator visits.... Women’s willingness to make things work reflects their motivation, optimism and excitement about the program.” Bermudez and Matuszeski, Ensuring Continued Success, 6 (emphasis in original).14. US Global Health Initiative, “Mali.”
15. The process for identifying and training replicators is drawn from interviews with animators and replicating agents, February 7-8, 2013, in Kebila and Faragouran, Mali.
Chapter 3
1. United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the US government’s bilateral aid agency.
2. Ashe and Parrott, Pact’s WEP in Nepal, 6.
3. Achyut Hari Aryal interview.
4. Roodman, Due Diligence, 119. This ratio refers to group solidarity lending models. For all types of microfinance, the staff-to-loan ratio ranges from 238 staff per individual loan to 306 staff per “village banking” style loan.
5. Mayoux, Women Ending Poverty.
6. Tankha, Banking on SHGs, 35; Srinivasan, Microfinance India, 3.
7. Maes and Reed, State of the Microcredit Campaign Report 2012, 3.
8. Nageeb Sumar assisted with this project.
9. Helmore, “Revisiting the Early Days of CARE’s Savings Groups,” 61.
10. Allen, “Savings Groups Global Outreach.”
ιι. Hamadziripi interview.
12. Ibid.
Chapter 4
1. Biteye interview.
2. For more information on the Stromme Foundation, see http:// Strommestiftelsen.no/english.
3. Romana, “Saving for Change in Mali.”
4. BARA and IPA, Final Impact Evaluation, 59.
5. Howard, “Mali’s 2.5 Percent Problem.”
6. UNDP, “GII: Gender Inequality Index, value.”
7. UNICEF, “Mali Statistics.”
8. Ibid.
9. UNDP Mali, “Promouvoir l’egalite des sexes.”
10. IPU, “Women in National Parliaments.”
11. The gendered division of labor and financial roles in Mali is well documented. See, for example, Creevey, Women Farmers in Africa.
12. BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali, 77.
13. Romana, “Saving for Change in Mali.”
14. Rutherford and Arora, The Poor and Their Money, 39, 2.
15. Ibid., 12.
16. Collins et al, Portfolios of the Poor, 4.
17. Ibid., 174-5.
18. BARA and IPA, Final Impact Evaluation, 11.
19. Ruberg, Saving for Change in Mali, 20.
20. The acronym CAEB stands for Conseil et Appui pour !’Education a la Base in French, meaning “Counsel and Advice for Education for All.”
21. Kathleen Stack took the lead for Freedom from Hunger, along with Susan Grove, a graduate student from the microfinance course I taught at Columbia University.
22. Parmeshwar interview.
23. bavois interview.
24. Ibid.
25. White, “Depoliticizing Development,” 61.
26. There was a tension between the need for skilled facilitators with the capacity to tease input and ideas out of their trainees and the ultimate goal of making training itself so accessible and easy that group members would feel empowered to train new groups. The solution was counterintuitive: we needed to lay out a fully scripted, participatory dialogue, said marc bavois. “We give people a formula [that] replaces the capacity of the trainer to actually facilitate.” The Saving for Change manual would walk trainers through each step of leading an active discussion, question by question, prompt by prompt. A standardized learning conversation would ensure that every training created space for diversity and experimentation in each group: inexperienced trainers could copy this dialogue instead of copying a rigid set of group rules. From bavois interview.
27. Dunford, “Field Agents Matter, Tao.”
28. Parmeshwar interview.
29. Traore interview.
30. Samake interview.
31. Salimata Coulibaly interview.
32. Hugh Allen, the CEO of VSL Associates, a consortium of savings group practitioners, continues to help craft the VSLA model. He
shared with me a fascinating commentary on written records: with passbooks, he said, “It occurred to me that ledgers are an intellectual construct in which facts are translated into an abstract form so that results can be calculated.
But most poor people have enough confidence in the system that they do not need to be reassured by a constant (and usually inaccurate) re-calculation. Passbooks are very concrete and visual, with their stamps, which is somehow closer to the way in which people in villages construct reality. What they see and hear is more powerful than what is rendered only abstract as a set of results. So passbooks work everywhere except when there are very low levels of literacy In Mali the oral system has broken the mold for an illiterate target group.” Allen interview.
33. BARA and IPA, Baseline Study of Saving for Change in Mali, 39.
34. Parmeshwar interview.
35. Ibid.
36. Lamine Coulibaly interview.
37. Traore interview.
38. Parmeshwar interview.
39. BARA and IPA, Final Impact Evaluation, 61-62.
40. Oxfam America, “Saving for Change FY14 Outlook,” ι.
41. Basenji Coulibaly interview.
42. Lamine Coulibaly interview.
43. Bagayoga interview.
Chapter 5
1. El Salvador Country Leadership Team, Joint Strategy of Oxfam International in El Salvador, 5.
2. Oslin, Savingfor Change in ElSalvador, 5; US CIA, “El Salvador”; El Salvador Country Leadership Team, Joint Strategy of Oxfam International in El Salvador, 8.
3. Sostowski and Maravilla, Estudio de Factibilidad, 23.
4. Ibid., ¿¿.
5. UNODC, “UNODC Homicide Statistics.”
6. Sostowski and Maravilla, Estudio de Factibilidad, 5.
7. In Spanish, CCR is known as the Coordinadora de Comunidades para el Desarrollo de Chalatenango. The acronym is derived from its former name, the Comite Coordinador para las Reptriaciones, which reflects the organization’s original mandate to protect the rights of returning formerly displaced people and rebuilding the community after the civil war.
8. Devietti and Matuszeski, Savingfor Change Program Assessment, 19.
9. Ibid., 20.
10. Ibid., 11.
11. Ibid., 207.
12. Ibid., 176.
13. Ibid., 150.
14. Ibid., 151.
15. Allen, “Savings Groups Global Outreach.”
16.
Alas, Programa de Ahorro y prestamo comunitario El Salvadory Guatemala, 137-65.17. Ibid., 144.
18. Ibid., 159-65.
19. Ibid., 218-19.
20. Ibid., 219.
21. Ibid., 172-73.
22. Ibid., 168.
23. Ibid., 156.
24. Ibid.
25. Devietti et al., Savingfor Change in Guatemala Baseline, 3.
26. Guatemala Country Leadership Team, Guatemala, 3.
27. Manz, Paradise in Ashes, 21.
28. UN WFP, “Guatemala: Overview.”
29. Devietti and Harrison, Feasibility Study Literature Review, 2.
30. US CIA, “Guatemala.”
31. Rodriguez, Bringing Saving for Change to Guatemala, 2.
32. Ibid., 11-12.
33. Devietti et al., Saving for Change in Guatemala Baseline, 25.
34. Ibid., 23-4.
35. Alas, Programa de Ahorro y prestamo comunitario El Salvadory Guatemala, 83-91.
36. Name removed to protect identity.
37. Alas, Programa de Ahorro y prestamo comunitario El Salvadory Guatemala, 35-39.
38. Musalo, Pellegrin, and Roberts, “Crimes without Punishment.”
39. Ibid., 170.
40. Alas, Programa de Ahorro y prestamo comunitario El Salvadory Guatemala, 9-21.
41. Ibid., 83-91.
42. Name changed to protect identity.
43. Alas, Programa de Ahorro y prestamo comunitario El Salvadory Guatemala, 68-71.
44. Ibid., 9-21.
45. Ibid.
46. Ashe, Trip Report, 5.
47. Name changed to protect identity.
Chapter 6
1. Ashe, Saving for Change, 6.
2. Further details and in-depth analysis on the hypotheses, methodology, data, and results of the impact evaluation described in this chapter appear at length in BARA and IPA, Final Impact Evaluation.
3. For a thorough literature rcvι ew of ιrn∣uιct stuJoint Strategy of Oxfam International in El Salvador, 5th Draft. El Salvador: Oxfam America,
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Additional Resources
To learn more about the organizations mentioned in In Their Own Hands and to continue the conversation surrounding the savings group revolution, you can find further information from the following list of resources:
Oxfam America
Oxfam America is a global organization working to right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice. As one of 17 members of the international Oxfam confederation, Oxfam America works with people in more than 90 countries to create lasting solutions. Oxfam saves lives, develops long-term solutions to poverty, and campaigns for social change.
For more information, see http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
Freedom from Hunger
Freedom from Hunger brings innovative and sustainable self-help solutions to the fight against chronic hunger and poverty. Together with local partners, Freedom from Hunger equips families with resources they need to build futures of health, hope, and dignity.
For more information, see https://www.freedomfromhunger.org/
Str0mme Foundation
The Stromme Foundation is a Norwegian international development organization that helps poor people in the global South climb out of poverty through microfinance and education.
For more information, see http://strommestiftelsen.no/english
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life.
For more information, see http://www.gatesfoundation.org/
Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA), College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona
The Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) is a unique academic research unit within the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. BARA’s mission is to place anthropology at the service of contemporary society, prepare the next generation of professional anthropologists, advance knowledge of the human condition, and address the pressing issues of local communities. BARA faculty and affiliates carry out research, teaching, and outreach activities within Arizona, throughout the country, and internationally.
For more information, see http://bara.arizona.edu/
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
Innovations for Poverty Action is a nonprofit organization dedicated to discovering what works to help the world’s poor. IPA designs and evaluates programs in real contexts with real people and provides hands-on assistance to bring successful programs to scale.
For more information, see http://www.poverty-action.org/
Aga Khan Foundation
The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) focuses on a small number of specific development problems by forming intellectual and financial partnerships with organizations that share its objectives. Most of the foundation’s grants are made to grassroots organizations testing innovative approaches in the field. With a small staff, a host of cooperating agencies, and thousands of volunteers, the Aga Khan Foundation reaches out to vulnerable populations on four continents, irrespective of their race, religion, political persuasion, or gender.
For specific information on the Aga Khan Foundation’s work with savings groups, see http://www.akdn.org/akf_beyond_financial_services.asp
CARE
CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE’s community-based efforts to improve basic education, end gender-based violence, provide healthcare and nutrition, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity, and protect natural resources.
For specific information on CARE’s work with savings groups, see http://www.care.org/work/economic-development/microfinance
Catholic Relief Services (CRS)
Founded in 1943 to service World War II survivors in Europe, CRS works to assist impoverished and disadvantaged people overseas, working in the spirit of Catholic social teaching to promote the sacredness of human life and the dignity of the human person. Although its mission is rooted in the Catholic faith, its operations serve people based solely on need, regardless of their race, religion, or ethnicity. Since 1943, CRS has expanded in size to reach more than one hundred million people in ninety-one countries on five continents.
For specific information on CRS’ work with savings groups, see http://crs.org/microfinance/
The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP)
CGAP is a global partnership of thirty-four leading organizations that seek to advance financial inclusion. CGAP develops innovative solutions through practical research and active engagement with financial service providers, policy makers, and funders to enable approaches at scale. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP combines a pragmatic approach to responsible market development with an evidence-based advocacy platform to increase access to the financial services the poor need to improve their lives.
For more information, see http://www.cgap.org/
Plan International
Plan is an international, child-centered development organization working with seventy-eight million children in fifty developing countries across the world to promote child rights and lift millions of children out of poverty.
For more information, see http://plan-international.org/
The Carsey School of Public Policy, University of
New Hampshire
The Center on Social Innovation and Finance (CSIF) at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire conducts rigorous and timely research on sustainable community development and supports training and research initiatives on the impact of savings groups to increase financial inclusion for poor people and communities. Carsey has been a leader in training for savings groups practitioners, offering workshops through its Sustainable Microenterprise and Development Program (SMDP) in Southern, East and West Africa since 2004 and co-organized the first global summit of savings groups practitioners in Arusha, Tanzania attended by more than 260 practitioners from 51 countries.
For more information, see http://carseyinstitute.unh.edu/
The Savings Group Information Exchange (SAVIX)
The SAVIX is a reporting system that provides transparent and standardized data on savings group programs worldwide. The SAVIX’s goal is to facilitate analysis and improve program results by comparing regional, country, project, and trainer performance.
For more information, see http://savingsgroups.com/
Savings Revolution Blog
The Savings Revolution blog is a forum for practitioners of savings groups to develop and exchange ideas on savings groups and financial inclusion. Launched in January 2011, the site has built an online library of more than one hundred documents related to savings groups, hosted in coordination with the Savings-Led Working Group of SEEP, as well as numerous podcasts, videos, and photos.
For more information, see http://www.savings-revolution.org
The SEEP Network
The SEEP Network is a global network of more than 120 international practitioner organizations dedicated to combating poverty through promoting inclusive markets and financial systems. SEEP represents the largest and most diverse network of its kind, composed of international development organizations and global, regional, and country-level practitioner networks that promote market development and financial inclusion. Members are active in 170 countries and support nearly ninety million entrepreneurs and their families.
For more information, see http://www.seepnetwork.org/
Globalization and Sustainable Development Program
The Globalization and Sustainable Development Program at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) carries out policy research to further just and sustainable international trade and development. Priority research areas include the global food crisis, foreign investment, China’s role in Latin America, and reforming US trade policies.
http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/policy_research/globalization.html