“What’s next for me?”

That’s the question that countless men and women in savings groups across the HOPE International network have often asked themselves and our team.

With a safe place to save and small loans from their group savings, hundreds of thousands of men and women have launched small businesses, invested in farms, provided for their children, and navigated unexpected challenges together.

And as their success grows, so do their dreams. A vegetable seller may want to expand inventory. A farmer may see an opportunity to cultivate additional land. A shop owner or seamstress may have customers waiting but lack the capital needed to grow.

In Burundi, 96% of savings group members reported needing more funding beyond what they could receive as loans from their savings group. But bigger loans from traditional banks were still out of reach.

One long-term savings group member, a rice farmer in Burundi, proposed a new kind of solution: Could there be a way for savings group members like him to access loans from HOPE microfinance institutions?

HOPE’s friends at VisionFund, the microfinance arm of World Vision, had already developed a model for creating this kind of financial bridge. After they trained our team in Burundi, we could introduce our new group-lending bridge: FAST loans. Continue Reading…