Village Savings and Loans Associations

Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) are predominantly rural women groupings of between 25 and 30 members who come together to pool their resources together. This helps make available soft loans for group members to invest into their small scale farms and trades. It also serves as a cushion to members in times of social needs. In a nutshell, the VSLAs seek to fill in the huge gap created by inadequate funding to rural women from commercial banks.

The VSLAs mainly benefit rural women engaged in small scale farming and trades. However, men who show interest are incorporated into the groups.

The VSLAs was the brain child of the Chief Executive Officer of TEERE and some community leaders in November, 2011. This project enjoyed initial funding from the SILDEP and the TEERE CEO who bought the first 29 boxes for the groups. The VSLAs started from the Bongo district of the Upper East Region in Vea, Lungo, Zoko, Nyariga and Gowrie with 29 groups.

• Create a local avenue for resource mobilisation to mitigate the non-availability of financial institutions and high interest rates.


• Instil a savings culture in rural communities especially among women


• Assist in promoting higher crop yields.


• Equip members with financial literacy skills.


• To economically empower women.


• Create avenues for introducing good governance and leadership at local levels.


• Help build self-reliance, self-confidence and community trust.

TEERE through VSLAs has devised the means of making available funding for women at a very low interest or no interest at all for investment into farms and trading activities. The organisation also makes the services of professionals such as agricultural extension officers to help in promoting the best agricultural practices to achieve higher yields. TEERE is aware that local traders need some level of training to enhance their financial skills to sustain their activities. This is relevant to TEERE because profits made from these endeavours help to economically empower women.

Again, Teere believes in the bottom-up approach to governance hence makes the services of governance experts available to train local women in electoral processes, conflict resolution and leadership skills since the leaders emerge from amongst the members. All this is grounded on strengthening community trust and self-confidence.

The VSLA has enjoyed a lot of support from the rural people that it targets. The project currently has extended its coverage area to two other districts in the region. As at now, the Bongo district has 210 VSLA groups, the Bolgatanga Municipality has 5 groups and the Talensi the latest catchment district has 2 groups. There is ongoing community sensitization to make way for the project in other communities.

The impact of the VSLA project has been tremendous, over 5000 women have had access to loans made available by VSLAs to members. There have been investments into sources of livelihood which has adjusted standards of living upwards.

This project was introduced by TEERE in 2011 when it was just a community mobilisation group and it has been sustained and is still ongoing in the Bongo District, Bolgatanga municipality and Talensi District. The sustainability of this project has been achieved through extensive community sensitization. This programme has also survived through contributions made by existing groups to help set up other groups. Thus by far TEERE has structured this programme to self-replicate. Even though, Teere over the years has tried to keep these women groups active, it still needs further support to make this a reality. Therefore, Teere is sourcing funds from various institutions including women support groups to help sustain it for the foreseeable future.

TEERE has been the major source of funding and currently opened to partner any organisation whose visions are in sync with ours. The existing VSLAs are also a major source of funding to help set up other groups through donations.