CO-508412 Oxfam in Laos has been working on partnership engagement with Oxfam America since 2015 to deliver Oxfam’s signature ‘Savings for Change’ (SfC) program with great success in two provinces of Laos. Oxfam in Laos has also been working closely with the Lao Women’s Union (LWU) since 2015 until mid-2019 on WEE by focusing on the introduction and expansion of SfC. The first phase of the project from2015 to 2018 was focusing on promoting SfC practices by forming the saving and loans groups that enabled people to access small amounts of credit.
The second phase, from October 2018 until May 2019, expanded existing SfC groups and ensured their ongoing effectivefunctioning. By the end of June 2019, 32 saving groups were formed and functioning well. The total membership of these saving groups were 555 people (496 women and 59 men). From November 2019 – October 2020, WEE project was continued again and was able to maintain SfC activities and increased the SfC groups from 32 to 35 groups, and its members increased up to 615 (554 women). However, there was a gap of funding until now, so Oxfam in Laos could not provide ongoing support in this area.
During the previous phases of the project, feedback from group members showed that to ensure the use of SfC practices help to reduce poverty, women required additionaland wrap around support including assistance to develop clear visions how to use their savings, and opportunities to develop and improve on technical skills and access to markets. Currently, though groups are saving money, women’s use of savings is usually limited to health needs or family emergencies rather than business development or improving livelihoods.
Gender Action Learning System (GALS) is a community-led methodology that uses visual diagrams to empower women and men to imagine the future they want by taking action against social norms that drive gender inequality. This methodology is especially applicable for use by ethnic communities in a low literacy context.
The exchange learnings, feedback, and evidence from SfC women participants is the basis for the design of Oxfamin Laos 12-month project (April 2022 – March 2023) to further integrate Oxfam’s GALS into the SfC approach. Our objective is to support the LWU to continue their support for SfC groups in the two current provinces, with a strengthening of the gender lens in SfC by using GALS and enterprise approaches for WEE and scale up in the additional provinces.
Evidence shows women in many communities are seeking more intensive support around identifying wider ranging gender inequality issues, and SfC methodology alone is not able toaddress this gap. Whilst SfC has provided a strong basis for economically empowering marginalized women, better results could be achieved by integrating other methodologies.
In addition, the sustainability of SfC remains critical. Oxfam believes the saving groupswill better sustain if further attention is given to supporting group members’ planning, implementing, coaching, supporting, monitoring as well as the vision setting up. There is also a need to embed the SfC methodology and other gender focused tools within key networks, structures, and local organizations in Laos, so that these approaches can be taken forward by local actors beyond their partnership with Oxfam.
Moreover, while SfC will enable women to access loans and financial resources, GALS approach will bring about powerful and positive changes in social and gender norms and relations for men and women, including youth and children at household and community level. A direct relationship will be found between behavior change at the household level and improvement of the livelihoods, including higher productivity, better access to services and markets, and increased household assets (livestock, agriculturalequipment, and home improvements), increased investments in the education of boys and girls and a reduction in the number of monthsof food insecurity. Increased income and savings can also be used to rent other resources for farming, to hire more labor for more production, to buy improved seeds and to boost their small trade.