Savings for Transformation

Our Impact

World Vision has helped create over 79,000 savings groups.
World Vision has mobilised more than 1.6 million savings group members
79% of savings groups member are women – over 1.3 million women - helping women’s economic empowerment
Over 105,000 adolescent members have been supported

3,800 savings groups have access to VisionFund’s FAST loan. Including 90,000 members with 320,000 children.

S4t fact sheet

A staggering 1.7 billon people around the world still do not have a bank account . Majority of them live in poverty- and conflict-affected countries.

Women are disproportionately affected - as 56% of unbanked adults - 980 million women - are financially excluded and have no access to banking services. That means, they cannot safely put money aside to provide the very basic needs for children such as food, health care, and education. Poverty also increases the risk of violence against children, as child labour and child marriage.

About 1.2 billion children globally are multidimensionally poor, that is, lacking food, sanitation, shelter, health care and education that they need to survive and reach their full potential. Due to their unique developmental state, girls and boys who grow up in poverty will have lifelong consequences for their health, nutrition, education, safety and future earnings.

Financial inclusion is a key element of social inclusion, a crucial step towards economic empowerment to overcome poverty and income inequality.

World Vision is working to end poverty and hunger by 2030 so that the most vulnerable - children living in poverty can survive and thrive. Our global reach and focus on sustainable livelihoods is enabling families to create lasting change in their own lives.

Our approach

World Vision’s Savings for Transformation (S4T) project model builds resilience for vulnerable families. Through S4T Groups, men and women in poor communities set up their own groups which enable them to save money together in small amounts and lend to each other when needs arise, such as family members’ illness, children’s education, and falling income due to droughts. Therefore, the S4T group is a key building block for World Vision’s economic development interventions, contributing to women’s social and economic empowerment, household resilience, and social cohesion.

Digitisation is becoming increasingly important in this modern world. World Vision is working to address multiple - financial, digital and gender – gaps. In the context of the pandemic, our collaboration with DreamStart Labs, through a use of a single shared smart phone enables us to digitise an entire savings group, making rapid delivery of life-saving alerts, information, and resources possible.

Our unique collaboration with VisionFund makes S4T groups sustainable – VisionFund is supporting savings groups by supplying lines of credit and savings accounts that allow members to manage their money. VisionFund’s FAST programme (Finance Accelerating Savings group Transformation) provides credit into the cashbox of the group, to boost their own internal savings, so they can grow their businesses and livelihoods. This is done cashless and paperless using mobile money and digital client onboarding tools. Through VisionFund’s financial literacy training, using the Embedded Education method, savings group members - predominantly women living in rural areas - receive the necessary coaching and training to make good use of the loans.

As a child-focused organisation, we encourage S4T group members to learn more about the importance of child protection to increase child well-being. Download our four illustrative lesson plans for S4T facilitators to teach this alongside their corresponding flip charts from the Child Protection for Savings Groups main page.

For more information, we invite you to download our new Savings for Transformation (S4T) Design Guide and Implementation Guide (French and Spanish versions also available below).

Learn more about World Vision's Livelihoods programmatic approaches or contact us at livelihoods@wvi.org.