The Building the Resilience of Vulnerable Communities in Burkina Faso (BRB) project leveraged women’s savings groups as a platform to provide complementary services in nutrition and agricultural education, access to agricultural extension support, linkages to formal agricultural and micro-business financing, and gender dialogues with the aim of improving household resilience. A mixed-methods, longitudinal quasi-experimental research design implemented between 2016 and 2018 found that BRB participants experienced improved food security, dietary diversity, self-perceived resilience and sustained savings accumulation despite an economic downturn experienced in 2017 due to a drought and subsequent poor harvests. Women reported increases in the implementation of new income-generating activities, earned income, the adoption of climate-smart agricultural techniques and improvements in harvest production as a result of the project interventions. There were mixed outcomes in social norms related to decision-making power, fear of spouse, and confidence in speaking out in mixed-gender forums. Despite the inherent difficulty in measuring changes in resilience, the research supporting the BRB project suggests a sense of “bouncing back” among the treatment group after the 2017 drought in Burkina Faso compared to the comparison group.
Climate change is the most urgent challenge of our time, and the impacts disproportionately affect people living in poverty.
Development programs are increasingly aiming to support populations…
Developed by the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups, this brief presents emerging evidence from studies in diverse African contexts— with a deep dive into Nigeria and Uganda&mda…
There is a wide body of evidence examining the effectiveness of different types of women’s groups, particularly economic self-help groups (SHGs), Village Savings and Loans Associations (…