Saving for more
Group savings scheme enables villagers to not only pay for day-to-day expenses but to also start their own businesses
improving the economic capacity in local communities,” says George Ganiau, an economic development programme specialist with World Vision. “We do two things. One is the savings programme and the other is the marketing programme, where we train local farmers and link them with buyers.”
Ganiau has helped set up a number of savings groups. Each one has the same rules, according to a manual, and is run by those in the local community, not World Vision.
“We form a group of 25 members, we encourage both genders,” says Ganiau. “They save money for one cycle, which is one year, and then at the end they share out the money.”
Individual members can also take loans and re-invest in the group. Most also donate a small amount each fortnight towards an insurance-type “safety” scheme, which helps if a member has a baby or a family member dies.
At Forau, a seaside village in East Malaita, the group meets at the beachfront, around a long wooden table. Behind them is a half-built house, and a pet pig which grunts noisily at each round of clapping.
In pride of place on the table is the savings box, a metal container with three padlocks whose keys belong to three different members.
When we visit, it is the first meeting for the year and the box is empty, but that doesn’t last long. Within half an hour they have $85 Solomon Islands Dollars (SBD) in the safety fund.
Most of those in the group are women, who tell us time and time again they joined to save the money their husbands would otherwise spend on beer.
Father Moses is one of three men in the Forau group, and was also one of the first to join, in an attempt to set a good example for his congregation.
He plans to use his savings to build a house, but he says most people use the savings on school fees. “It has increased the number of children going to school in this catchment,” he says. “Now more people want to join because they begin to see the good outcome.”
Last year, one woman in the Forau group saved SBD$6000 (about $1100), the most of any member. She paid not only for her school fees, but improvements to her home, and is thinking about starting a small business of her own.
Re-investment is one of World Vision’s goals in its bid to help communities become selfsupporting, a target that has faced numerous challenges in recent years.
Civil unrest in the early 21st century, including a coup in 2000, saw the near collapse of the country’s fledgling economy — which relied mainly on the export of timber and fish.
Many enterprises were forced to close when infrastructure in Guadalcanal was damaged during riots, alongside disruption to transport, commerce and agriculture.
A series of natural disasters caused further setbacks, to the point where the Solomons is now the second-most aid dependent country in the world. Most donations come from Australia, New Zealand and Japan, which give more than $300 million between them a year.
“The approach we are taking is that we didn’t want to raise the level of dependency by giving [communities] more money,” Ganiau says. “We want to increase their knowledge and ability to produce. Basically, empowering them. So when the project leaves the community they can support themselves. We didn’t want to start with big money.”
There is hope the savings groups will also help the communities in