SwE & iECD

Funded by the Episcopal Relief & Development, The Savings with Education Initiative (SwE) aims at alleviating poverty by creating income and instill entrepreneurial skills and knowledge among community members to support each other through team work.

The initiative further engages and empower community members with health education and environmental sustainability. The initiative makes use of community based facilitators who are trained on entrepreneurial skills to help form and facilitate the Savings Groups.

Savings with Education is a highly replicable savings-led microfinance initiative that provides basic financial and non-financial services to the very poor and those living in rural villages (especially women) when they are organized into self-managed Savings Groups. Saving with Education reaches people who typically have no access to formal financial institutions. Saving with Education provides an opportunity for village members to save, borrow money and learn about health, business and money management through education sessions. As a result of their participation in Saving with Education, Savings Group members create solidarity to solve relevant family and village issues.

In addition to education sessions, another feature of Saving with Education is a structured approach to replication, which ensures the effective, rapid and low-cost creation of new Savings Groups by Replicators. Replicators are qualified members of Savings Groups formed by Animators. Animators train and coach Replicators to form other Savings Groups in their own villages or in nearby villages. The replication of new Savings Groups enables even more very poor and rural village members to gain access to financial and non-financial services.