At Thursday’s session on savings groups at European Microfinance Week, Roy Mersland of the Norway-based Center for Research on Social Enterprises and Microfinance (CERSEM) discussed the preliminary analysis his team made on the SAVIX database when it held information from 200,000 savings groups, drawing on data from 1,200 support projects.
The database has since grown to cover 424,000 savings groups – also known as village savings and loan (VSL) associations – with 9 million members in 75 countries, according to Hugh Allen of VSL Associates, the Germany-based coordinator of SAVIX. He estimates that a total 786,000 savings groups owned by 17 million members have been initiated by NGOs in 76 countries. An unknown number of additional