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Reports & Resources

Browse our resource library to find our latest reports and publications.

We make all of CARE’s evaluation and research reports available for public access in accordance with our Accountability Policy. These are available at our Evaluation Library.

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Impact Reports

Village Savings and Loan Associations Annual Report 2020

April 21, 2021

In 2018 we launched our Village Savings & Loan Associations (VSLA) scaling strategy, with the target of reaching 50 million women and girls (62 million people) in countries with the highest rates of gender inequality and economic disparity, by 2030. Little did we know that we would be faced with a global pandemic that would have a catastrophic impact across multiple dimensions of women’s lives, deepening gender inequalities.

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Lessons Learned

Case Study: Mobilizing Village Savings and Loan Associations for Health Facility Maintenance

July 8, 2019

This brief describes the process of engaging facility management committees in village loans and savings as a tool for health facility improvements. This work is under Sustaining Health Facility Improvement Project under the USAID -funded Advancing Partners and Communities award, on which CARE was a sub-recipient to advance social accountability and engagement between communities and health management for sustainable results.

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Lessons Learned

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68): The Value of Savings Groups to National Governments & Funders

March 27, 2024

At the 68th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68), the UN’s largest annual gathering on gender equality and women’s empowerment, CARE, PEI (the World Bank’s Partnership for Economic Inclusion), the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, and the Government of Uganda brought together over 40 people from key governments & civil society organization leaders to discuss experiences and lessons learned from challenging gender inequality and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Savings Group models. The focus of the session was to explore how government-led Savings Groups (also known as Village Savings & Loan Associations or VSLAs) are a tool for gender norms transformation, women’s economic empowerment, poverty eradication and social protection.

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Impact Reports

The Negotiating Power of the Savings Group

January 22, 2024

Ho Thi Ngam is from an isolated village in Quang Tri province in Vietnam, she is the leader of her Village Savings & Loan Association. She is 41 years old and married with two children. She runs a small grocery store, and the family earns additional income from growing acacia. The climate crisis is challenging Ngam and her community; flooding has damaged crops, impacting agricultural production. Ngam helps women in her community find different income-generating opportunities - from coordinating groups of women to find seasonal work to brokering a fair wage for women. Ngam is determined to support women in her VSLA and community.

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Evaluations/Research

Savings and Solidarity in Crisis: CARE’s VSLA in Emergencies Pilots

May 17, 2022

Globally an estimated 1.1 billion women, nearly one in three, are excluded from the formal financial system. This is particularly true in humanitarian crises. The Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) model with its focus on establishing low cost, self-administered informal financial services - with the ability to link to formal financial institutions where available - has the potential to help address this gap and lay a foundation for future economic recovery. Since 2019, CARE has been working through our VSLA in Emergencies (VSLAiE) approach to increase sectoral learning on how to successfully implement VSLAs in some of the most challenging crisis affected settings.

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