Savings and literacy in Kenya

By Brooke Turbyfill
Southern Spirit staff

Raheli Paulo is from the village of Kamadufa, located in a remote area of Tanzania that lacks water, schools and health facilities. Paulo's Masai community consists primarily of nomadic herders, so when a drought hit the area recently, most of the men in the community became depressed. They turned to alcohol and immoral activities, leaving the Masai women to provide for the community.

In this traditional village, most women are illiterate and have little social or political power. But The Salvation Army and its partner, Pact, Inc., launched WORTH in 2006, and now the community landscape is changing.

WORTH is an innovative women's empowerment program through which women teach themselves to read and write, become skilled in record keeping, generate personal and group savings and create successful small businesses. Pact, Inc. started the program in Kenya in 2005, and it has grown to operate in upwards of six countries since. The Salvation Army implements the program in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda with hopes to expand it to Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India in the future.

The program is not like other microfinance initiatives in that it does not provide financial assistance to WORTH participants. Instead, women who choose to be in a WORTH group of about 15 to 25 members from their community, generate their own income. The WORTH curriculum helps them start a group savings account that grows over time.

Before the group gets underway, a mutually agreed upon savings amount is decided among the women, one of which acts as the facilitator. Then, each woman must contribute that mandatory savings amount each week.

A loan fund is generated from the group contributions (distributed into a three-lock box of which only a select few members know the combination). Then, the group can decide to loan amounts to women within the group to anyone outside the group who may approach them for a business loan. Women are taught how to evaluate business plan and thereby decide on the recipients of their loans. The interest on the loans is then divided among the savers in the group as dividends at the end of that loan cycle. So the more money a woman saves, the more dividends she earns. Since there is no external loan fund, the WORTH groups act as their own village bank and can manage their money as they see fit.

Besides the savings element of the WORTH program, there is a literacy component. The curriculum books that The Salvation Army distributes to each member of a group teach the women about investing and good business practices, but they also teach them how to read and write.

In addition to learning the valuable principles of business practice, savings, provision for their families and literacy, women in WORTH are gaining self esteem and self respect. Empowerment workers collect success stories generated through the WORTH program, and each WORTH meeting begins by recounting a success story. "Women have solved problems, and that is what we focus on," said Holly Christofferson, who oversees the WORTH programs from the SAWSO office at national headquarters in Alexandria, Va. "Every meeting starts on that footing - a success focus rather than a problem focus." This focus is empowering women to realize their potential and to help each other, their families and the less fortunate in their communities.

For example, Raheli Paulo is the chairperson for the Upendo group, and as she learned to read and write she noticed that the children in Kamadufa were being denied a basic human right - the opportunity for education. So Paulo started a preschool for the 32 children under the age of 5 in the village. Although Paulo started the WORTH program with only a fifth-grade education level, her desire to change her community led her to teach the children everything she learned about reading and writing from the WORTH curriculum book.

After hearing about the school, which met outside under a tree, a local non-government agency decided to fund the preschool and built a building where the children could learn. The Salvation Army is helping women like Paulo change their community and influence the next generation to
envision more for their own future.

In countries such as Malawi, India and Zambia, The Salvation Army has implemented other women's empowerment self-help programs and traditional microfinance programs. The Salvation Army in Malawi has teamed up with CARE, Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc., to implement the CARE model of Village Savings and Loans, which also helps women generate savings to better their circumstances.