In this video interview, Lalaine Naquita, the Savings and Credit Association program specialist for HOPE’s partner CCT, talks about how the very poor in the Philippines are finding a way to save.
Lalaine’s team of 35 savings facilitators targets nontraditional clientele, including street dwellers, indigenous populations, fishermen, and even children. Some wouldn’t think these individuals could save—sometimes they don’t think they can—but the importance of saving is nowhere more evident than among these populations, where a savings account can provide a vital safety net. Already the program has grown to reach over 2,600 savers throughout the country. Lalaine’s goals for the program are ambitious, to say the least: “My goal is that all of the SCA partners would know God as their Savior and learn why savings is so important,” she says.
![Before Eveness Mulungu joined the Walusungu (“mercy”) savings group through our church partner in Malawi, she faced days where she and her family ate animal feed because they couldn’t afford human food. But that changed when she joined the savings group. Eveness used her first group loan of about $1.70 (U.S.) to start a business selling doughnuts and beans.
“By the end of my first cycle I made $140 (U.S.),” Eveness shared. “My life is no longer the same now; [I] was regarded as no one in the community. ... This was the first time in my life that I ever touched and owned big money like this!”
Pictured: Eveness, with her husband in front of their piggery—a third successful business that she operates.](https://blog.hopeinternational.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)