Saving for Change - "It's a kind of magic"

Salaamaalekum Blog,

Last week I travelled to Tambacounda, an 8 hours drive from Dakar to the East.
A bit dusty, slightly hot (39° C / 102°F), but extremely welcoming.
The R4 pilot is implemented here by our partner ONG La Lumière, preparing the scaling up next year.

Here my colleague and friend Cheikh is taking care of me very well, always inviting me have meals with him and the people at his place (I still haven't really understood who really lives in the house, but I guess that's not so important...).

Tonton (Uncle, as they call him) Cheikh is on the left:

The R4 initiative in Senegal builds on Oxfam's very successful "Saving for Change" program, a community finance initiative involving today over 50 000 women in the country.

We attended 2 groups meetings, in Gourel Boyé and Bidian Koto, both in the Rural Community of Missirah.
The meetings start with a dance, to give energy to the participants and to welcome the visitors:

And (of course?), I was asked to take my turn... (Still some improvements to be made I guess)

And then the magic begins. All of these women are illiterate, they only speak their local language.
But they engage in a very structured process, in which each week they all save 200 CFA ($ 0.40), and use the money to give each other credits to develop income-generating activities... All the conditions are defined by them (interest rates, penalties, etc.), and reimbursement rate is of 100%!
And the reserve in the groups we visited are today of around 50,000 CFA ($ 100).
Pretty impressive, no?

And now we are working with these groups to provide larger credits, insurance, support economic activities...
But more to come in the next posts!

Meeting of the group "Wakilaré"

Treasurer receiving the savings and counting the money