Ziguinchor, Senegal, Assignment: Freedom From Hunger

We woke early this morning in Dakar to catch a flight over the Gambia to Ziguinchor, southern Senegal. Zinguinchor is the capital and the chief town of the Casamance area of Senegal, lying at the mouth of the Casamance River. It has a population of over 250,000. It is the second city of Senegal, but largely separated from the north of the country by The Gambia.

As the capital of Casamance, Ziguinchor has been at the center of the three decade long conflict with Dakar, that has flared into open civil war on more than one occasion. With a population that is a majority Diola and Christian, the effects of a large migration of Wolof Muslims fleeing drought in the north during the 1970s caused tensions to flare.

A 1983 demonstration against price rises in Ziguinchor Market was put down violently by Senegalese forces, and an insurgency by the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) followed, effectively wrecking the economy of the region. The 2004 peace accords, signed in Ziguinchor, were hoped to be the end of the violence, but in 2006, sporadic fighting by an MFDC split and laying of land mines again erupted in rural areas nearby.

We’re here to capture images and stories of Freedom From Hunger’s Savings for Change program. Here, FFH works with The Regional Committee of Solidarity Women for Peace in Casamance. Usoforal /CRSFPC is a nonprofit association created in 1999 by women who have realized the need to involve women fully in community life so they can contribute and support the main work of building peace.

CRSFPC / Usoforal, working to better involve women in building a lasting peace for a prosperous and egalitarian society and to develop projects with them to ensure them a better social and economic status.

During the day we observed a Saving for Change meeting. Saving for Change enables groups of women to deposit savings-often starting with weekly deposits of only 20 cents-and build lump sums for predictable needs. When savings accumulate, the women in the group act as their own bankers, approving small loans to each other from their pooled savings. The interest they charge themselves for the loans goes back into the pool of savings, yielding a healthy return on the deposited savings of each member of the group.

Below you can watch a Savings for Change meeting video (raw, straight out of the camera, un-edited, Nikon D3S video)

The services of a microfinance institution are not needed because the loan capital comes from the women themselves, the recordkeeping is simple (it is actually done without writing in West Africa), and the women themselves monitor all the transactions.

Freedom from Hunger trains and supports local service organizations (NGOs) to train women to start their own groups and manage their own financial needs on an ongoing basis. Over time, the funds grow and allow the members to meet larger and larger financial needs such as healthcare, education, small business start-up and expansion, agriculture and even purchase of food during the hungry season before the next harvest.

Our last stop of the day was to meet one of the women who started a small business with the help of her Saving For Change group. She now sells soft drinks and beer and earns enough money to pay the school fees for her children.