Oxfam America Blog

Leaders of a Saving for Change group in Zantiebougou-Fala, Mali, keep track of deposits at a group meeting. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America

Interesting news: we just heard that our Saving for Change program has broken the 250,000 participant barrier. According to the message we just got from our VP John Ambler, Saving for Change now has “more than 250,000 members, and operates in more than 6,000 villages on three continents.” This makes Saving for Change one of Oxfam America’s largest non-humanitarian programs.

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We’ve been looking at the photos we got from Senegal-based photographer Rebecca Blackwell from a trip in March in Mali to visit several Saving for Change groups in the southern part of the country near Bougouni. I want to share a few of Rebecca’s portraits and some quotes from the women we met, just because I have been thinking about them lately. I detected a common theme in each village and group: dignity. The women described how saving and borrowing money from their group helped them manage their affairs independently. You can see pride in their faces, and hear it in their words.

Soumba Doumbia. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America

Soumba Doumbia, mid 30s, three children, sells cloth and clothing to earn extra money.

“Before we established our group, we had no hope. If we had problems and needed money, we had to go to a nearby town and borrow it. We would ask people here for help, but they did not always say yes. Now we can find money for our problems from the group.”

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With 2008 behind us, we’re highlighting photos we think best capture Oxfam’s work last year. Here’s a photo of one of my favorite people. More to come from others.

My boss, Jane, has a saying. She wants the writers to “narrow the distance” between the poor people we work with and our readers here in The States. So, when each of us heads out into the field, we keep this mission in mind, filling our notebooks with the voices of the people we meet and the stories they have to tell.

Every year, a few people’s stories stand out. Sometimes it’s because of the sheer adversity they face. Other times, it’s the great success they’ve seen and the simplicity of the solutions they pursued. The woman I’m thinking of falls into the latter category. Her name is Seng Sreila, and I have visited her home twice in two years. She’s a rice farmer in Cambodia who took out a series of small loans from her village savings group to start her own business. With that money, she’s milling rice for other farmers in her village. Her success has become well-known in her community, and her status, that of a local celebrity.

The first time I met her, Sreila gave us the kind of welcome that’s typical of the people we meet during our travels. She was kind of shy, but had this beautiful smile that popped up whenever she was nervous. After just a few hours of talking, she treated us like good friends. When we were gathering our things to leave, she grabbed my arm in a familiar way, and walked me back to our car. As she thanked me for coming, she held my hands. I remember how hers felt; they were small, like mine.

Seng Sreila in June 2008 showing off her rice mill. Photo by Inazio.

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Minata Konaré is proud of what she and others have done in her Saving for Change group in Mali. “This is our own money,” she says. Brett Eloff/Oxfam America photo

With the abrupt economic downturn I have to wonder what will happen to US foreign aid budgets when the new president assumes office. Barack Obama originally said he will double foreign aid to $50 billion by the fourth year of his administration, if he can get elected. Earlier this month he said he will probably have to re-evaluate this plan, but that he does not intend to cut the foreign aid budget. It seems certain: Whoever becomes the next president may have to devote more treasure to bailing out banks and other unforeseen expenses.

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In the peace of early evening, as the heat ebbed and the dogs curled into the shallow beds they had scratched in the dust, E.T. Sarath sat folded in his sarong on the veranda of the temple near his home on the southern tip of Sri Lanka. A monk at the temple had offered us tea, steaming and electrifyingly sweet in porcelain cups, and we were sipping it quietly, thinking about all that Sarath had told us and worrying that his tsunami tale—blunt and bitter—could be so different from W.H. Priyanka Krishanthi’s.

“Now people have come to a situation that’s worse than the tsunami—and that’s dependency,” Sarath had said. “Most of the NGOs are responsible for this situation.” Read the rest of this entry »