Join us in writing an article to be published!
Discussion details
All of you, that is the 17 implementing partners, have a great deal of experience in development.
Together with you we would like to write an article compiling the most important good practices from your organisations.
Based on your past experience, please describe in a few sentences in the comment box below this blog post what you found to be the most important good practice to strengthen the livelihoods of your target group.
We will then come back to you so we can jointly develop the article in more detail, highlighting the good practice experiences of each and every one of you. Once the article is finished it can be disseminated to a broader audience, even beyond the IESF, which will give your organisation more visibility.
There are many definitions of what a good practice is, so we want to keep things simple.
For now there is no need to be very detailed, just those few sentence will do.
So think about your past experience and share your thoughts!
The table below, which is adapted from an FAO document, suggests a few criteria for you to think about when selecting a good practice to share for the joint article. See more details here.
You can propose a good practice if it meets at least 2-3 of the following criteria:
|
Criteria for Good Practices |
DESCRIPTION |
|
1. Effective and successful |
A “good practice” has proven its relevance as the most effective way in achieving a specific objective; it has been successfully adopted and has had a positive impact on individuals and/or communities. |
|
2. Innovative and creative |
It is innovative and/or creative in its design and implementation |
|
3. Environmentally, economically and socially sustainable |
A “good practice” meets current needs, in particular the essential needs of IE entrepreneurs/workers or potential entrepreneurs/workers, without compromising the ability to address future needs. |
|
4. Gender sensitive |
A description of the practice must show how actors, men and women, involved in the process, were able to improve their livelihoods. |
|
5. Technically feasible |
Technical feasibility is the basis of a “good practice”. A good practice is easy to learn and to implement |
|
6. Inherently participatory |
The good practice involves project stakeholders through meaningful participation and ownership. Participatory approaches are essential as they support a joint sense of ownership of decisions and actions. |
|
7. Replicable and adaptable |
A “good practice” should have the potential for replication and should therefore be adaptable to similar objectives in varying situations. |
(2)
Log in with your EU Login account to post or comment on the platform.
Young Africa understands that for a young person to reach their full potential, all aspects of their personality and talents need to be nurtured. Young Africa aims to empower young people with an intregrated approach of training which encompasses skills of the hands (technical, vocational and entrepreneurial) to make them self-reliant, skills of the heart and mind to live with dignity, skills of the soul to live with purpose (life skills). In other words everyone young person that Young Africa empowers has to take a hand skill, life skills and business skills for us to consider them holistically empowered.
Dear IESF Team,
Thanks for this opportunity and sorry for our late reply! In our YEIS project in Rwanda, we are using the Village Savings and Loan (VSL) methodology, which is a good practice to promote financial inclusion for the poor and to strengthen their livelihoods. It is a cost-effective and easily replicable/scalable model.
CARE has employed versions of the VSL model around the world to strengthen livelihoods security since 1991, and has seen significant success with the poorest, most vulnerable groups in society. CARE’s VSL model is designed to be simple and easy to implement, especially tailored to groups with low literacy and little or no experience with formal financial services. Saving as little as ten cents per week, even the poorest households can participate.
Currently, in Rwanda, CARE is no longer directly implementing the VSL model but supporting local partners (including AJPRODHO and YWCA, implementing the YEIS project) to do so. The VSL Model involves the voluntary formation of groups of 20-30 self-selected participants who make regular savings contributions. They do this by purchasing shares to a central fund, which is kept in a locked box whose 3 keys are held by different group members. With the approval of their peers, any of the members can borrow from this central fund. Loans are paid back with interest, causing the fund to grow. Members also contribute to the group’s social fund, which is used for social support to group members in case of significant events at their households (e.g. paying for health care). Group members decide together on allocation of this social fund. The social fund helps them to increase social cohesion, and prevents using the investment fund to cope with shocks at the household level. All transactions are carried out at regular (i.e. weekly or fortnightly) meetings in front of members. The cycle of savings and lending is time-bound and usually lasts between nine months and one year. At the end of the agreed period, the accumulated savings and interests are shared out amongst the membership in proportion to the amount of shares that each member has purchased over the course of the cycle. In this way the VSL associations (VSLAs), which are autonomous and self-managing, provide simple savings and loans facilities. Fast-growing VSLAs can be linked to formal financial institutions to enable their further development.
The VSLAs formed serve as an excellent platform for further individual empowerment, including financial literacy, entrepreneurial skills, access to information on rights, laws, relevant government programmes, how to formalize a business or work relationship but also gender norms and how they affect society in general and women specifically. In our case, the YEIS project uses peer educators. Two elected peer educators per VSLA are trained on identified issues and provided with skills and simple material such as durable, plasticized posters to train their peers in the same VSLA. As the group is already meeting weekly, the peer educators can easily share their information in short weekly sessions without having to worry about the logistics of organising a formal training among their peers. In addition, a VSLA has proven to be the perfect platform to foster ‘softer’ skills such as self-esteem, leadership skills and negotiation skills, and to discuss and deconstruct negative gender norms.
Should you need any additional inputs, please do not hesitate to contact us!