The impact of a Village Savings & Loan Association (VSLA) extends far beyond simply learning to save. By joining a VSLA, a woman can improve multiple areas of her life including educating her children, increasing her income, improving her access to healthcare, engaging in collective action, and so much more. The savings box is just the beginning of her journey towards resilience.
VSLAs are now the foundation of CARE’s work on food and nutrition security and are embedded in $770 million USD worth of current Food & Water System programming. This includes using VSLAs as a platform to promote improved nutrition, access to markets for women farmers, and more.
The main objective of integrating VSLAs within CARE programming is to create deeper impact over time through layered, sequenced, and adapted interventions, such as business skills training, nutrition, and addressing normative barriers.
This report summarizes the impact of the first four years of CARE's VSLA scaling strategy, which seeks to expand the potential of group members, not only through CARE implementing VSLAs directly in increasing numbers of countries, but also through influencing others to adopt, adapt and scale up the VSLA model beyond our direct footprint.