OUR APPROACH

We believe in community driven change and empowering individuals and communities to identify their needs and to develop a sustainable future for themselves.

We empower our local partners through providing the funding to allow them to develop the Village Savings and Loans Projects within their community.
The funding provided is primarily spent on facilitators and trainers who work with the savings and loans groups. The training and support provided to the groups is the critical element in enabling communities to understand how to save and manage their money in an effective way.

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We identify and collaborate with local organisations who understand the country, region & community and work with them to implement a very successful informal financial service called Village Savings and Loans Projects.
Village Savings and Loans Project, in their simplest form involve training people to save and loan money within a group and empowering people to invest in their own income generating activities and which helps them to develop a more prosperous and sustainable future.
We continue to learn and improve our approach but we have some key values that are at the core of how we approach the work we do:
  • As a charity we want to be completely transparent in everything we do
  • Everything we do is based on building strong and positive relationships
  • We are focussed on understanding the community that we are working with and working with them as friends
  • We work hard to build trust with the communities and people that we work with and always do what we do with honesty and integrity
  • We always aim to operate with outrageous courage
  • A passion for seeing positive change is key to driving us forward
  • We believe that empowering and providing individuals and the community is the best way to overcome challenges

Village Savings and Loans Projects

Implementing Village Savings and Loans Projects within communities is at the heart of what we do as a charity. Village Savings and Loans Projects provide people and communities living in extreme poverty access to informal financial services. There are currently 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty and 2.5 billion people that are excluded from any type of financial service.

A Village Savings and Loans Project brings together a group of people who are trained in how to collectively save and loan their money in a safe and accountable way. The groups are usually 20-30 people in size and the groups are usually run in 12 month cycles.
At the end of every cycle, the savings are shared out amongst the group members according to the amount each member has saved.
The average rate of return (over the group cycle) is approximately 35% to 40% and the repayment rates on loans to group members is higher than that of traditional microfinance services.
The output of a group is powerful but process is very simple.
Our Village Savings and Loans Projects enable communities to be trained and to understand how to save and manage their money in an effective way. This enables individuals, families and whole communities to overcome poverty without any dependence on financial aid from the west.

VILLAGE SAVINGS AND LOANS +

We believe in community driven change and empowering individuals and communities to identify their needs and to develop a sustainable future for themselves.
Alongside our Village Savings and Loans Projects we partner with charities and non-profit organisations to enable other communities needs to be met.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW WE WORK

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Our work focuses on empowering community driven change and providing a help up rather than a handout.

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