INFORMATION +
MONEY is POWER
You collect information
about yourselves and use it powerfully to negotiate with the outside
world.
You collect money
as a way of collecting people and bringing the community together.
You create
a discipline in
managing this money which allows you to arbitrate for more resources for
the community.
Savings
is also a way of showing the outside world that you are credit
worthy.
That is why you have DAILY
SAVINGS
as the way the settlement develops the rigour and discipline that
proves to the city that communities are serious about solving their own
problems.
DAILY SAVINGS is
also a way of including the very poor within a given settlement. It is
easier to put in small amounts of money every day that to try to put in a
large sum at one shot once a week or once a month, which might be more
convenient for the better-off in the community.
All systems that get developed should work for the bottom
ten percent of people in poor communities.
That way, you are assured that the rest will fall
in line. However, if you develop a system that works for the better-off
within the settlement, the chances of that system working for the poorest,
and "trickling down" to those most in need, are much less.
Women
play an important role in savings,
as it comes naturally to a woman to manage the economics of her family.
She knows how to get the next meal ready with minimum resources. This
ability to economize and yet feed her family makes her the best manager of
savings and credit in her home and in the community.
Handling money also redefines her place in the
existing decision-making equations within the community.
Collective saving gives her the power to make
decisions for the community on issues that concern everyone
- like demolitions, planning and managing basic services for the
settlement, managing credit and so on.
Daily
saving pushes people in the
community to meet on a daily basis, and in this way, they develop a
stronger tie between themselves which is built on trust.
Money has a way of also bringing out a whole lot of uncomfortable emotions
and attitudes which come into the forefront. This way, it becomes easy for
the group to work towards creating an equilibrium that works for all of
them. It brings out issues of power and control, vested interests and
leadership crises.
So instead of managing this in a classroom
training mode, you would put this back to the settlement and support them
to resolve all the uncomfortable issues.
This way, they realize the solution to their problems has to come from
within the community, not by external norms.
When the community understands this, they
gradually learn this very important lesson and become more confident with
the more difficult issues that confront them.
So they develop a whole lot of skills which enable them to deal with other
issues, both personal and collective ( from domestic violence to issues of
land and shelter).
And these skills become the collective asset of the community.
Collective
savings also allows
communities to move from simple to complex.
You move gradually from handling small amounts of money and learn to
manage this. This makes you ready to deal with larger amounts of
money.
People first learn to take small loans and repay them, and use the same
discipline to plan and repay their larger housing loans, which are
long-term.
This way, they also create for themselves
a spectrum of credit for different purposes - crisis, income generation,
consumption and loans for housing and infrastructure.
This way communities use savings and credit as a kind of safety net which
enables them to take a housing loan and also take an income generation
loan so that they do not have to draw from one loan for other
purposes.
This is a way of assuring that their community's organisation will respond
to the different needs of the family and the community.
Celine D’Cruz
A reflection on Saving and Credit in
Phnom Penh
March 1999 for ACHR TAP
