Enhancing income generating activities and social cohesion through Village Savings and Loans Model for conflict-affected communities.

Support for Social Stability and Security of Conflict affected communities in North East and Middle Belt, Nigeria is a United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) intervention in Benue state. UNDP through CLHEI emplaced and strengthened mechanisms for enhancing social cohesion, community security and in turn contributed to the reduction of incidents of sexual and gender based violence against targeted communities.

CLHEI supported Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) by delivering training for Capacity Development, offering Technical Support and disbursed Matching grants to each association’s revolving funds across the 4LGAs of implementation (Agatu, Buruku, Guma, Kwande) in Benue State, Nigeria. The activities were successfully implemented in the context of this project. CLHEI established 60 VSLA groups, with a total of 1,131 members, out of which 80% Milestone Report (910) are female members who were able to save a combined sum of 1,429,240.00 naira after 4 meetings in 1 month.

Through the operational success of the VSLA Model in the communities, they have been several replications across other communities, giving birth to over 9 new VSLAs cut across Makurdi, Buruku, Kwande, Guma and Agatu LGAs. CLHEI currently is supporting with technical capacity a total of 68 Village Savings and Loans Association with over 1,675 members across 15 communities in 6 Local Government Areas of Benue State. CLHEI seeks social cohesion rebuilt and community security reestablished, culminating to contribute to efforts to strengthen the resilience of targeted communities and its affected populations, especially women, girls and the elderly against future vulnerabilities.

During the course of implementation, a key lesson learnt was that even though community members have capacity to save, they were not saving owing to the fact that there were non-flexible saving structures. The VSLA model showed this difference from other saving models that they have experienced, in that it allows them to pool funds & save in the lowest amounts possible; use the funds to boost or startup businesses, and engender social cohesion through meetings.