Fieldstone Collective
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Programme · running since 2014
Almost every rural community we work in already runs a savings system. The useful question is rarely how to introduce one, and almost always what it is currently unable to survive.
The Chansolo Savings Federation approached Fieldstone in 2014, not the other way around. Its members had read the Nyakura partnership agreements — which are published in full — and asked whether the same terms could be written for something other than a school.
What they wanted was not credit. Eleven groups across the basin were already lending to their members at rates they had set themselves. What they could not do was hold a harvest. Groundnuts sold in May fetched roughly two-fifths of what the same crop fetched in February, and no household could afford to wait nine months for the difference.
Fieldstone funded two storage buildings and a set of scales, and then spent four years on the harder part: the rules. Who may store, at what fee, with what recourse if the roof leaks, and what happens when a member needs cash in June and their crop is in the store until February.
The scales were the smallest thing they paid for and the thing that changed the argument. You cannot dispute a weight.
The risk in livelihoods work is that a cooperative becomes dependent on the organisation that helped it grow. We track a single indicator against this: the proportion of federation operating costs met from member fees rather than grants. In Chansolo it stands at 91%. In the Sumarai Delta, where the partnership is younger, it is 46%, and the partnership will not be considered successful until it is not.
Limits
Published because an organisation that only describes its scope in terms of what it might do has not defined a scope.
We do not make loans, hold member savings, or act as a signatory on any cooperative account.
We do not buy, broker, or export produce, and we take no margin on anything a member sells.
We do not fund enterprises owned by individuals rather than by member institutions.
Approach
The first year of any livelihoods partnership is spent mapping the savings, lending, and mutual-aid arrangements a community already operates. We have yet to arrive somewhere that had none.
Most smallholder income is lost in the six weeks after harvest, when everyone sells at once. Cooperative storage is duller than market linkage and does more.
Fieldstone never holds member funds and is never a signatory on a cooperative account. Where we contribute capital, it is a grant to the federation, recorded as theirs.
Every partnership includes a stress test: what happens to this group if the rains fail twice? If the answer is that it dissolves, the design is not finished.
Where it runs
Zambiasince 2014
Ninety-six savings groups that were lending to one another for a decade before Fieldstone arrived, and asked for storage rather than credit.
Indonesiasince 2018
Fieldstone's youngest partnership, and the one that most clearly is not finished yet.
Reporting
Sustainable Livelihoods
The Chansolo Savings Federation did not need credit, financial literacy training, or a mobile application. It needed somewhere dry to put a harvest.
Wanjiru MbatiaChansolo Basin, Zambia7 min read
Sustainable Livelihoods
Fieldstone's most expensive recent mistake, and the six-page letter that made it worth the money.
Priya KandelSumarai Delta, Indonesia6 min read
