Savings Groups Blogs

Five Innovations. One Goal: Improve Women’s Resilience through Savings

Jun 16, 2021 | WS4R Innovation Partners

Earlier this year, we were thrilled to award five grants as part of the Women Saving for Resilience Innovation Fund. The awards support ground-breaking COVID-19 response and recovery efforts r…

Three Steps to Successfully Integrate VSLAs into Humanitarian Programming

May 5, 2021 | Natacha Brice, CARE

There are over 300 million people around the world living in fragile contexts, with nearly 26 million refugees fleeing conflict and scarcity. With historically high numbers of people living in…

Creating a Resilient New Normal for Savings Groups

Feb 8, 2021 | Richard Rumsey, World Vision

Photo credit: World Vision
This blog post was originally published on the FinDev Gateway blog. We are pleased to share it with the SEEP community.
World Vision shares how they are working to…

2020 SEEP Conference: What I learnt about digital Savings Groups

Nov 19, 2020 | Diana Dezso, Itad

Photo courtesy: DanChurchAid
This blog was originally published on the Itad website. We’re pleased to share it here with the SEEP community.
#SEEP2020 was my first virtual conference. While I…

What Happens When We Take Women Seriously? How to Implement Savings Groups To Achieve Gender Equality

Sep 9, 2020 | Emily Janoch, CARE

Photo Credit: Peter Caton/CARE 2017
How about we went into a project saying, “women are powerful, let’s treat them that way?” If we wish to impact lives beyond the life of on…

Overcoming Challenges in Agent Liquidity Management for Informal Savings Groups

May 12, 2020 | Lisa Chassin & John Balaba (PHB Development, Oxford Policy Management)

Agent booth in Lusaka, Zambia. Credits: John Balaba, SatF
This blog looks back at a recent Savings at the Frontier collaboration with nine financial service providers (FSPs) in Africa to exami…

What Do Savings Groups Mean for Adolescents?

Mar 27, 2020 | Dicken Thunde, World Vision Ghana

Adolescent Savings for Transformation (S4T) Group in session
Youth savings groups (YSGs) can respond to their needs, promote entrepreneurship and workforce development skills that will help yo…

Children Should Be Protected From Worrying About Money

Mar 2, 2020 | Mark Kelly, World Vision International

Girls’ Savings Group led by World Vision Mozambique
Multidimensional Poverty
It is a defining moment of our childhood when we begin to understand money. Its value and its scarcity. Its ability…

Practitioner Insights: Using Financial Services to Build Resilience

Feb 28, 2020 | Tracy Mitchell, RTI International

(L to R) Nicki Post, from Mercy Corps; Kevin Mulligan from USAID Center for Resilience and Amy Sink Davies, RTI present at the 2019 SEEP Annual Conference.
Access to financial services is a wi…

Reaching 1 Million Women with Relevant, Responsive, Accessible Technology

Feb 10, 2020 | Mark Reilley, Pact

Photo credit: Pact
WORTH is an award-winning micro-banking program that empowers women to lift themselves and each other out of poverty and recently reached its one-millionth member! WORTH&rsq…

Daily Reminders for Strong and Self-Reliant Savings Groups in Tanzania

Feb 5, 2020 | Whitney Moret, FHI 360

NGOs have promoted Savings Groups (SGs) in Tanzania since the early 2000s, and they are now a standard economic strengthening intervention in projects designed to benefit orphans and vulnerabl…

Empowering Women Through Savings Groups

Oct 1, 2019 | Elizabeth Kiamba, FSD Africa

This blog was originally published on the FSD Africa website.
We are pleased to share it here with the SEEP community. Photo courtesy: FSD Africa
Our economies are built on the back of women&…

Youth Financial Inclusion: What We’re Missing & How Can We Serve Them Better

Sep 16, 2019 | Helen Bailey, Itad

In a recent review of evidence of youth savings initiatives, we found that many studies struggled to disentangle results for youth from the rest of the household and either lacked a definition…

Checking in With the Savings Evidence Map

Aug 20, 2019 | Diana Dezso, Itad

The Savings Evidence Map lives on the Mango Tree and consolidates evidence on a broad range of savings initiatives.
The Savings Evidence Map was launched in 2018 as part of the Savings Learnin…

Looking Backwards to Move Forward: What Traditional Ways of Saving in Groups Can Teach Us

Jul 29, 2019 | Jeffrey Ashe

It was the summer of 2004. Mamadou Biteye [1] and I [2] met a group of women traders at a market two hours from Bamako, Mali’s capital [3]. Before we made our pitch for Saving for Change…

Impressions of An Urban Refugee Savings Groups Program

Jul 15, 2019 | Richard Reynolds, VisionFund International

The neighborhood that we visited during our field visit in Nairobi, Kenya.
Impressions of An Urban Refugee Savings Groups Program
I feel fortunate to have been a part of the kickoff meeting fo…

Meeting a Refugee, a Savings Group Member and a Businesswoman

Jun 27, 2019 | Anna Ferracuti, UNCDF

“How do you like this neighborhood? That bag really suits you!” exclaims Jaqueline as she walks us to her shop. She is ecstatic because earlier today, I purchased a bag from her fo…

Less Haste, More Speed: Establishing an Organizational Culture for Adaptation

Mar 21, 2019 | Yusef Salehi, Savings at the Frontier Programme

Photo credit: SatF/OPM/Sam Vox
As the Savings at the Frontier (SatF) programme enters its fourth year, Yusef Salehi reflects on the positive effects of having had three years of space –…

Savings in Sub-Saharan Africa: Access, Policies and Priorities

Nov 5, 2018 | James Robinson, Itad

This blog was originally published on the Center for Financial Inclusion website. We are pleased to share it here with the SEEP community.
Saving hasn’t kept up with access in the growth of…

Are Savings Groups for Vulnerable Populations a Good Idea?

Aug 29, 2018 | Microfinance Gateway

This blog post was originally published on the Microfinance Gateway blog.
Sybil Chidiac of Grameen Foundation discusses what works and what doesn’t when tailoring savings groups to…

Latest Posts

Five Innovations. One Goal: Improve Women’s Resilience through Savings

Three Steps to Successfully Integrate VSLAs into Humanitarian Programming

Creating a Resilient New Normal for Savings Groups

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