Client

  • Name: CARE Bangladesh (Sanchay Sathi Project)
  • Services: Mobile Application Development

Objective

  • Manage group electronically using handheld device

  • Time saving & cost effective group data management

  • Accurate, consistent, time sensitive transaction

  • Streamline accountability and internal control

  • Facilitate group meeting and its transaction for broken network area

  • Linkage between community group and private sector

Tools & Technologies

Platform : Android

Background

Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) is a widely accepted tool to ensure financial inclusion of the poor and extreme poor. CARE has been implementing VSLA in 77 countries where 20 million active members are active participants. SHOHARDOIII project worked in the difficult to reach areas of the country like Char (Riverine islands) and Haor (wetlands), where access to finance is challenging. VSLA helped poor and extreme poor people save small amounts of the money from their income and then lend the funds within the group to invest in income-generating activities. As members of the VSLAs have low rate literacy, it is difficult for them to calculate their share earnings, especially during the share-out process. To digitalize the process and ease the calculation, SHOHARDOIII came up with introducing an App for the VSLA members, namely Sanchay Sathi.

Automated Group Management

Sanchay Sathi facilitate community group to manage their group activity using devices covering the following –

  • Incorporated complex logic of the VSLA process and converted them in the app

  • Define constitutions based on group decisions

  • Forming community group and manage group members

  • Conduct savings and loan meetings

  • Automated share out process

  • Automated ledger book to track each transaction of the group meeting

  • Multi-lingual support to facilitate apps operation in local language

  • Integrated user manual and video tutorial to provide guidance during the apps operation

  • Integrated sync process provides data backup into the apps server to ensure transaction and data scurity