Replicating Agent Training

The training session concluded. President Aminata stood up once more. She thanked the members for coming to the meeting and reminded them of the time and location of next week’s meeting.

Djeneba stepped away from a conversation with President Aminata to catch Bintou as she left the mango tree. Bintou put a hand up to steady the peanut basket as she turned back, curious and a little nervous—she had been awarded a lot of loan money that afternoon. What if the group had made a mistake and Djeneba was about to correct it?

Djeneba instead launched into a proposal.¹⁵ She had just attended a “training for trainers” course taught by her NGO. They had asked animators like her to find Saving for Change members who had the dedication, open-mindedness, and pas­sion to organize more women in their villages into Saving for Change groups and teach the skills to run their meetings themselves. She asked Bintou if she would like to train new groups in her village. Would Bintou like to become a repli­cating agent?

Bintou asked what the work entailed. Djeneba explained that if she agreed, they would go together to speak with Bin- tou’s husband and get his agreement too before moving for­ward. Then Bintou would be invited to a three-day training with other replicating agents, where she would learn the pro­cess of organizing a group. She would receive a picture-based manual that leads replicating agents step by step through the process of forming a group.

Many women in Bintou’s village had already approached Djeneba about forming them into a new Saving for Change group.

Bintou thought for a moment, considering the sugges­tion. Her small business had grown since she started sell­ing vegetables with her first loan last year. With the added money from the business and share-outs, her family was eat­ing better, even during the lean seasons when her family’s grain storage was used up. With that first loan, Bintou found she could focus on increasing the yield in her garden by pur­chasing fertilizer and that she could afford the cost of travel to the bigger market to develop her trading business. Bintou had noticed a transformative difference in her life as loans and share-outs allowed her new business to grow. She still felt as though she worked all the time, but her labor had been pay­ing off lately. Bintou knew she could spare a few hours per week to help other women in her village experience the same changes in their lives.

Djeneba emphasized that while animators may have tech­nical knowledge, replicating agents come from the commu­nities they organize, so they have a deeper knowledge of their neighbors’ circumstances and needs. Djeneba explained that replicating agents are volunteers—Bintou wouldn’t be paid—but her fellow villagers would respect her for this work. For some other replicating agents, newly trained groups had even volunteered a day of labor in the agent’s garden to thank her and keep her motivated. This was an important role.

Bintou nodded slowly. Saving for Change was important to her. Members gained the ability to meet some of their fam­ilies’ endless immediate needs, smoothing the harshest valleys of their variable incomes; at the same time, many like Bin- tou could begin to save enough money to invest in a business, one that could someday be profitable enough to substantially alter their living conditions. Bintou could see that through these weekly savings and loans for small businesses, the group helped its members be better off. Emergency loans helped them weather illness and disaster, so they could avoid selling precious assets such as livestock or expensive farm equipment when circumstances might otherwise have forced them to sell livestock, or a plow, or a donkey-pulled cart. The changes in Bintou’s life and the lives of her fellow group members were small, but they were significant. Life was less stressful now.

She agreed with Djeneba to go speak with her husband. She liked the idea of spreading this idea, helping to form sav­ings groups.