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Papers/Reports | July 23, 2018

THE SILC FINANCIAL DIARIES

Expanding Financial Inclusion in Africa Research Program

 

This report answers the following questions:

  • How do SILC households earn and spend money? What financial tools do SILC households use?
  • How do SILC households use SILC services?
  • How do SILC households manage their cash flow? How does their cash flow management change in response to major cash flow events in their lives?
  • Are there differences between the cash flows of men and women living in the same households? 

EFI was a 4-year project whose core goal was to ensure that vulnerable households experienced greater financial inclusion to improve their resilience. To this end, EFI formed savings groups using CRS' Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) and Private Service Provider (PSP) methodologies in Burkina Faso, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. The EFI project aimed to create 19,200 new SILC groups with 502,320 members and had targeted its areas of operation using financial exclusion criteria; criteria which may well stand as a strong proxy for poverty. To try to bring in poorer households, EFI made critical adjustments to the SILC methodology, known collectively as the "Pro-Poor Package" (PPP) and contrasted with "Normal" SILC programming. The PPP adjustments included, for example, training PSPs to identify and mobilize poor households, replacing a minimum savings with a "target" savings, removing fines for failure to save and reducing the pressure to take loans.

Other research reports related to this project are available here.

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