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Youth in enterprise & farming study
SaveAct facilitates the formation of savings groups in communities as a simple but effective tool to fight poverty, as a foundation for building sustainable livelihoods, and as a means to empower women and other vulnerable groups. Between 2019 and 2022, SaveAct...
The road to sustainable agriculture
Ten years ago, in the small village of Khaoue in the Eastern Cape, SaveAct held its first vegetable production training session with small-scale farmers from the village. The purpose of the two-day event, in September 2014, was to teach the farmers, who were all in...
Adaptation Network Colloquium: A MEETING OF MINDS
Taking place every two years, the Adaptation Network Colloquium is an opportunity to bring different kinds of people together! Penelope Price, coordinator of the event, said the colloquium provides a platform for academic members to present their research and for...
SaveAct’s journey into agroecology
SaveAct provided training to Biowatch facilitators to enable them to introduce SaveAct’s savings methodology to farmers they work with. Biowatch tried the methodology with one group, who then got remote support from SaveAct and their own facilitator during the Covid...
SaveAct tools shine in international study
SaveAct’s financial education tools are being drawn upon in the development of material for a study involving 540 adolescents in three countries, South Africa, Nepal and Colombia. The project, called “Alive”, is developing and testing interventions for...
Youth are hungry for financial knowledge
Youth are hungry for information and skills to manage their finances, and interventions are sorely needed. That was the finding of a recent pilot study done by SaveAct and partner Fiinafas, in collaboration with the Duzi-uMngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT). The...
Fostering financial well-being
Chloe Jacquin was not the stereotypical business school graduate. “I was interested in people and making a difference in their lives,” she says. At business school, she was interested in “ethics, finance, financial inclusion and anything related to that.” Her...
Here’s to being free!
When Lindelwa Ndwalane joined a savings group in 2021 she was in dire straits. “It was really bad. I was in debt. Actually, I was in liquidation,” she says. “It was an ugly time because I had no sense of needing to save or budget or anything like that. I didn’t have a...
‘You educate a woman, you educate a generation’
After losing her job in Johannesburg in 2019, Themi Mzindle came back home and challenged herself to start doing something new. She planted two rows of cabbages in her garden. She sold the 20 cabbages to neighbours and this encouraged her to grow other vegetables....
Business skills boost tuckshop profits
Prudence Mgasheni joined SaveAct in 2019. At the time, she already had a tuckshop, and she started another at the beginning of 2023, using her share-out from 2022 to build and stock it. Her journey as a businessperson has had its ups and downs and she has learned that...
Choosing her own path: Part 1
Freedom to say NO Sibongile Mntungwa has lived the life of a rural woman and is now the director of an NPO that focusses on empowering girls and women. She's also a savings group member and a firm believer in the benefits of the savings method. When she...
Choosing her own path: Part 2
Financial freedom In part one of this story about Sibongile Mntungwa, she described the constraints of growing up and being a women in rural KwaZulu-Natal, where abduction for marriage still happens. She too was abducted but managed to escape. Twenty five years...
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