Around the world, Pact’s community banking program empowers families to overcome poverty

In the serene district of Kigamboni, just outside of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Salma, a 40-year-old mother of nine, lives a life devoted to family. When her 19-year-old nephew, Yusuf, had no one to care for him after his grandmother died, he joined Salma’s already packed household. 

Yusuf was born with HIV, and after a Pact-supported community case worker began working with Salma and Yusuf to ensure Yusuf was successfully adhering to life-saving medication, the amount of virus in his blood became so low that it was undetectable. He was managing his health well. 

Soon, though, his HIV rebounded. Yusuf was skipping medication doses because his family didn’t have enough food; taking antiretrovirals without a meal leads to weakness and nausea. 

The family found their lasting solution in Pact’s WORTH program, a low-cost, highly effective model that Pact has used around the world for decades to empower people – mostly rural women – to lift themselves and their families out of poverty. WORTH is a community banking and entrepreneurship intervention that organizes participants into groups of around 20. At weekly meetings, members make small savings deposits, and as a group’s fund grows, members can begin taking low-interest loans to launch or expand small businesses. Members also receive literacy, numeracy, and entrepreneurship training. 

The result is often life-changing. Women become breadwinners, able to provide their children with adequate food, medical care, and education. They also gain knowledge, friendship, confidence, and greater agency in their families and communities. 

For Salma and Yusuf, WORTH was just what they needed. Salma launched a small stall where she sells household essentials including cooking oil, spices, vegetables, tea, and juices.

“With this small business, I can provide for my family, and whenever Yusuf is home, he helps run it,” Salma says. “He stays at the stall while I take juices to schools to sell, allowing us to earn from both fronts.”

Yusuf’s health is now back on track, and his entire family has the food they need. 

“Economic stability is like ripples in the sand,” Muhat, the family’s case worker, says. It improves many aspects of life and can change a family’s course for generations. 

Pact began implementing WORTH in Nepal in the 1990s, and since then, it has reached more than 1 million people across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. While it began as a livelihoods development effort, WORTH has expanded to support many other development outcomes. Pact’s health and HIV programming rely on WORTH to help families reach health goals, just like Yusuf did. Pact has used WORTH in peacebuilding programs to reduce inter-community conflict driven by poverty. To protect the environment, Pact has leveraged WORTH to help communities build climate-friendly livelihoods, rather than generating income by destroying forests, for example. Pact has used WORTH to boost women’s involvement in local governance.

“WORTH is so much more than a livelihoods program,” says Amayèle Dia, a senior livelihoods officer at Pact. “What is most remarkable about WORTH is how effective it is for such a low cost – we provide groups with no start-up capital – and how long-lasting the impact can be.” 

Indeed, some WORTH groups have gone on to last decades after Pact’s assistance ended. Members have trained new groups entirely on their own, or welcomed daughters to join as they’ve grown up. 

“This is the essence of lasting community-led impact,” Dia says. “WORTH truly empowers communities to reduce dependence on outside assistance and sustainably improve their lives.”

Besides starting small businesses of their own, WORTH members in some cases have formed collaborative enterprises and business networks. Pact has also digitized WORTH through an app, and we are leveraging WORTH to build financial inclusion by connecting members with formal financial institutions. 

In Kenya, for example, Pact is now integrating WORTH into its Moyo Gems program, which empowers women gemstone miners in a range of ways, including by creating sustainable access to international gemstone markets. Formalizing their financial activities is helping miners to access a wider range of financial services, such as credit, which will allow them to reinvest in their mining operations and improve their livelihoods even further.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pact has leveraged WORTH to stop child labor in mining communities. The program has given families new sources of income so their children can return to school rather than work. 

In focus group discussions, WORTH participants in DRC reported finally having money for their children’s education and for their medical care. Members used loans and savings from WORTH to invest in a range of businesses, from small restaurants to brick production. Others bought homes for the first time or built new homes on their land to rent out for income. 

One woman reported that she now has a pharmacy, a small store, and a sewing workshop – all thanks to WORTH. Another, a mother, was able to drill a well on her property, eliminating the constant need to fetch water. 

“We make regular savings, and now, when our children fall sick, we can pay for medical care,” a member shared. “We manage to pay for our children's education. We also use our solidarity fund to … raise awareness among our peers” about the harms of child labor.

Says Dia, “The best part is that these participants are driving the change in their lives themselves. With just a little support, they are doing incredible things.”