CRS offers Muslim communities sharia-compliant savings groups

This 3-page summary describes the CRS sharia-compliant SILC approach, as well as results from its implementation since 2019 in the USAID-funded Girma project. In response to growing concern that conventional SILC excluded poor and marginalized Muslim communities, CRS designed a sharia-compliant version of SILC and piloted it in Mauritania and Sudan in 2015-2017. Learning from the pilot was used to improve and complete the model. In 2019, CRS took sharia-compliant SILC to scale in Niger in the USAID-funded Girma project. Learning from Girma included that 99% of surveyed groups reported earning a cycle profit at their most recent share-out, and that all participants, imams and other community leaders interviewed considered the sharia-compliant practices implemented by the groups to be legitimate (halal).