Adapted Product Series: Services that meet the needs of the Poor
Our Poverty-focused Microfinance Community of Practice (PovCoP) will be exploring adapted products over the coming months in a series of posts, group discussions, and interviews. We’ll start with a few case studies and learn what made each project a success. Please help broaden our understanding by sharing your own experiences with the community as well. For more information on adapting microfinance products globally, take a look at CGAPs recently released Better Insights for Better Products.
Group Savings for youth in El Salvador
Our second example of an adapted product grew out of a partnership between ENLACE and Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Watch the video below to see how Enlace’s group savings product in San Salvador has been successful with a group of working women.
Enlace originally began as a program of Catholic Relief Services partnership in 1997. With technical support from CRS, Enlace started organizing and running their own savings groups in 2009, and in 2010 began offering youth-exclusive savings groups (Reaching Sustainability: A Case Study). By combining Enlace’s group banking with CRS’s savings and internal lending community, Enlace and CRS were quite successful in this initiative. Their partnership was recently, among others, featured in the Washington Post. For more information on models for youth financial services, take a look at The SEEP Network’s case study: Building Sustainable Business Models for Youth Financial Services.
Is group savings relevant to your community?
If so, what challenges present themselves with this model?
What would help further the adoption of group savings in your region?
Leave your thoughts in the comments section below
Have suggestions for this Adapted Products series? Send them to Leah Verghese at MeasureLearnChange[@]gmail.com
Truelift 
Comment from:
Gustavo Fernando Flores Agreda
Director Ejecutivo
FUNDACIÓN AGROCRECER
“Me gusta mucho el modelo y experiencias en crear alternativas para jóvenes emprendedores de negocios pequeños,
de acuerdo al medio y de las necesidades observadas en el vídeo, considero importante ir paralelamente capacitando a formadores de nuevas empresas, antes de hacer que las empresas crezcan, la mayoría de señoras jóvenes madres, solamente expresan sus deseos de ayudar a los gastos familiares con su nuevo negocio, lo importante ahora es que tienen otra actividad que les permite tener mayor ingreso y deben obligatoriamente considerar que esta ventaja les da una nueva capacidad, la del ahorro, es en este momento donde deben pensar en asociarse o formar grupos de apoyo comunitario para generar ideas de negocios nuevos administrados por jóvenes y buscar beneficios comunes como atención medica, (salud) escuelas (educación), casa (vivienda), alimentación (mercados) propias actividades de financiamiento y autogarantias (crédito y ahorro).
Esto en términos generales podríamos perfeccionarlo haciendo una visita de campo que permita conocer el entorno y las costumbres de estas poblaciones, considero que son modelos que se pueden aplicar en cualquier país, en sectores donde exista un elevado indice de pobreza.”