SACRED Project

The SACRED project is designed to mobilize rural village finances into a village saving and loan programme, where the group members are then allowed to borrow from themselves. This is an innovative way of raising capital from within without depending on external sources. It is envisioned that the project will provide sustainable increase in household access to savings and credit facilities, and hoped that availability of savings and credit facilities generated by the group members will ultimately lead to alleviation of poverty by eliminating the absence, lack of, and inaccessibility to affordable credit which the rural poor households face. Through the savings and credit received, it is expected that income-generating activities will be founded and diversified hence strengthening livelihoods.

SACRED is a demand driven project, thought of by the community. The peasants and groups managing agriculture and water activities identified the need to increase their investments. However, the pace of the increase of their investment has been very slow primarily due to the requirement of a valuable collateral by formal village lenders e.g. shylocks.

The SACRED project will target the 20 villages targeted by SPEAD and WASEH, and to reach and benefit up to 1,000 savings and credit groups with a total of about 6,000 members, especially women who lack collateral to place at the shylock’s demand..