Community Development

The typical ASM-facilitated SCA has 15-25 members who make weekly savings deposits into a group fund. They manage the fund themselves, make decisions about who can receive loans from the group fund, set the terms and hold each other accountable for the repayment of their loans.
With this approach, extremely poor families can now invest to generate, stabilize, diversify and expand their household incomes while retaining earnings and capital in their own communities.

Savings: SCAs offer a safe place for members to keep their money, enabling families to save incrementally for their non-sponsored children’s annual school expenditures (tuition, school uniforms and supplies) as well as livelihood-related expenditures such as agricultural products (seeds for planting, etc.).

SCAs empower families to smooth out a monthly budget with group accountability. (For example, SCAs provide a place to keep cash right after harvest while making withdrawals on a systematic basis.)

Credit: the SCAs provide additional opportunities for families through access to credit for capital investments such as starting a small business or making home improvements.

Platform for Education:  SCAs also serve as platforms through which members receive training in business, agricultural techniques, nutrition, disease prevention and health promotion practices, among other topics of direct relevance to their health, livelihoods, and business goals.  These workshop topics further empower families to increase their earnings and improve overall health.

Although access to clean water fell to 29% after the genocide of 1994, Rwanda has steadily increased access, reaching 72% of the population by 2009.  Access to sanitation has also steadily increased, but 25% still lack adequate sanitation facilities.

Lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitation create both immediate health problems and productivity barriers for Rwandans living in poverty.  Waterborne illnesses result in stunted growth and school absences for children as well as lost productive days for adults.

 Domestic Water Filters:  ASM partners with SCA members in obtaining low-cost and contextually appropriate household water filters.  Water filters may be a small financial investment, but they yield a very high and multi-faceted impact.

Fuel Efficient Ventilated Stoves: Rwanda is the most densely populated country in all of Africa.  With 93% of its rural population and 45% of its urban population relying on wood for cooking, having a sustainable agroforestry industry capable of meeting current demand is daunting.  Although Rwanda has built an agroforestry industry which currently provides 80% of cooking fuel (both wood and charcoal) from renewable sources, the current demand is still greater than supply.

In addition to creating significant risk of deforestation, household air pollution (HAP) created by primitive stoves is a major contributor to diseases such as respiratory illness, pneumonia, lung disease and cancer, and even heart disease.

In Rwanda, women and girls spend significant time collecting firewood for cooking, time that could otherwise be invested in school work or economically productive tasks.

Considering all the above factors, facilitating access to low-cost fuel-efficient ventilated stoves is a high priority for ASM.  This single project empowers women and girls, improves the health of the entire family, and fulfills our commitment to environmental stewardship.

Lights for Homework: Rwanda has been aggressively moving forward in its development goal of expanding household access to electricity, jumping from less than 10% access in 2009 to 24% access by 2016.

However, access varies greatly between urban (60%), peri-urban (40%), and rural areas (15%).  Furthermore, as most students’ school days end at 4:30 PM, there is a very limited time frame for completing homework assignments during daylight hours. This results in a dilemma for students coming from extremely poor families: either they do not complete their homework, or they use lighting methods which are often unsafe.

ASM is committed to leveling the playing field for such students by partnering with their families in providing access to low-cost environmentally friendly lights.

A simple light can make the difference between whether or not a student in extreme poverty is able to fulfill his or her academic potential, which in turn impacts their future vocational prospects.