one peace corps volunteer's journey into the warm heart of africa

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

MY STORY: Community-Driven Banking for Women's Economic Empowerment

Hi all - this is a short story I submitted to Empower Women.org. This is a story from my time as a volunteer in Malawi on what women's economic empowerment looks like to me. Enjoy!

Even today, over half of Malawians are considered “unbanked”, meaning that they don’t have access to proper financial services. Despite this, there has been a steady rise in the use of informal banking systems such as the Village Savings & Loan (VSL) model. This is where people form groups and lend money to each other to start small enterprises. So while the poorer and more remote populations are isolated from financial institutions, Malawians are employing their own methods of saving and investing their money. These community-driven banking groups provide important small-scale economic opportunities, especially for women.


As a Peace Corps volunteer in the central region of Malawi, I had the amazing opportunity to work with a women’s VSL group that had been saving and lending to each other for over four years. As a foreigner working in the country, I had been taught that Malawian women are generally uneducated, illiterate, and unable to start a business because of gender inequality. While this may be true in many cases, I found this group to be the most entrepreneurial, hardworking, and intelligent women that I could have imagined.




Without a doubt the Kakunga Women’s Group has taught me more than I could have ever given to them. I have learned that economic empowerment for these women mean being able to provide school fees for their children, to afford hospital visits and life-saving medicine, to start a business and ensure food security for their family, and to gain decision making power within their home over how money is spent. But even more, I have learned that a small group of women who bank together can overcome the challenges of poverty, gender inequality, and lack of access to financial services. To me, the Kakunga Women’s Group are the epitome of women’s economic empowerment.