Welcome to High and Pat Growth, a podcast from Jamagi for people committed to creating a world where everyone has access to the services they need to thrive. We bring you candid conversations with leaders across global health and development, but raising the bar in what's possible with technology and human creativity. I'm Amy Vicaro, Senior Director of Marketing at Jamagi in your co-host, along with Jonathan Jackson, Jamagi CEO and co-founder. In today's conversation, we tackle the question, how can data collection in development move beyond just taking boxes for donors? What if it could actually empower the communities and program staff on the ground? In this episode, we sit down with the team at Five Talents, an organization supporting women entrepreneurs in Eastern Africa to discuss this very challenge. Here how they overhaul their entire model, moving from a traditional microcredit model to a savings group model. A key part of this transition was an evolution in their monitoring and evaluation approach, moving from potentially extractive M&E practices to a truly participatory approach, or community that's helped to find success and own their own data. We'll dive into the pivotal role technology played in this evolution, digitizing processes, ditching the paper on a bus system, and unlocking real-time insights that drive accountability and learning at every level. We'll uncover the profound benefits and also the hurdles of building data systems that genuinely serve the people they're meant to support. Enjoy. Welcome to the Hi-Impact Growth Podcast. I am here today with my co-host, Jonathan Jackson, and we are joined today by three incredible partners of ours from Five Talents. We have Rachel Lindley, who is co-CEO of Five Talents, Hannah Witchman, who is part of Five Talents Global Programming Team, leading M&E, as well as Samantha Mouli, who is Climate Literacy Manager at Five Talents. Welcome to the podcast. I would love to kick this off with an introduction to Five Talents' work. So starting with you, Rachel, to hear a bit of an overview of your work. So, five Talents, the one-line version is that at Five Talents, we support women across Eastern Africa, to stop businesses so that they can support their families. And the vehicle we use for that is savings groups, community savings groups, some organisations call them BSNAs, they have lots of names, but the core principle is groups coming together within the community to save their money and then to lend that to one another to invest in small businesses. So, often the best way to illustrate it is with a story. So, a typical member might be, let's call her Martha from DR Congo. Martha, she doesn't know her old she is, she's looking after five children. She got married at the end of primary school, so she never had chance to complete her education. She's a widow, her husband was killed in one of the wars, so she is really struggling to bring up her children because she has no access to any kind of financial services, no access to all-malad provenant and very little access to education or training. But then she hears about a community savings group. Through five talents, probably hears about this through her church, white talents partners with the church across Eastern Africa. And groups are open to people of all faiths and non, but that's probably how she's first going to hear about it, or from one of her neighbours, who's already a member. So, Martha decides she wants to join one of these community savings group and the first thing she does through the group is learn how to read and write and count. And already that's going to be transformational for her because I'm not only can she now start a business and keep business records and figure out profit and loss, but also she can vote for herself. She can read the instructions on medicine. She can read wrote signs. She can help her kids with their homework. So the whole world opens up for her just through literacy and numeracy. And of course, once the whole group is in the turret and numerate, they go on to learn financial literacy. So how to manage their money, how to save, how to have saving goals, how to make loans, how to set interest rates, brief pay-richs, rules and so on and so on. All the time they're saving in a communal pot so each women will bring along a small amount of money every week or a month. And when there's enough money in the pot and they will walk in through the money management training, they will start making loans to one another to invest in small businesses. So let's say Martha takes a loan from her group and she is there to buy a big sack of rice from the market and she sells it door to door by the muck court in her community. So the brunette longer have to travel to the market so often she's making a profit. And she's able to use the profits to repay the loan and then to invest in her family. But what we often find is that it's not just about the money. Martha might say to us what's changed is that now my children are going to school and I'm determined that my girls will go on past primary school. They're not going to get married at 13 or 14. They're going to complete their education and have more opportunities and federal chooses than Martha has always had. That's amazing. And I think one of the things that surprised a lot of people who don't know intervention well or work the SLA is due and how they work is just how crazy effective it is in terms of the impact that it has. And so I love to hear you know I actually didn't know that the literacy was a component of your program I designed is that common. And then you know where and how did that component come into the intervention across the SLA programs is that you know is there a huge difference in how these programs are run because I know the the turned BSLA can be applied to a lot of different things. But I'd love to see more I mean the evidence is overwhelming the positive of how effective these can be. And so I'm curious a you know the impact side what have you seen and then be how did you went on this specific model. Yeah, so I'd be probably fair to say that for a tolerance evolved through learning by doing when we started we looked very different from how we look today. So in fact, well we started we had some micro predict programs where five tenants was putting in low capital and we were not widely supporting the literacy element. Over time we have learnt perhaps that the micro global is much less effective and much less empowering the savings that model is much more effective and much more empowering. And part of that is very much the literacy element. So we don't incorporate literacy everywhere in places where people have had the chance to go to school and literacy and numeracy are relatively high there's no need to do it. But because we are too big working in the most marginalized areas and with typically majority women who tend to have fewer education opportunities. We do focus on literacy in those areas where people haven't had the chance to go to school. And we find the impact of that is it partly it makes the savings groups more effective obviously the members can hold the group leaders to account much better if they can check the secretaries and the treasures records themselves. It's also much more empowering when you can read your own past book and you know how much money you say and of course one of the business side. We would have people saying I got a business but I've no idea if it's profitable because I can't I can't count the profits. Even people cheat me at the market because they give me a note and I don't know what the numbers on it say. So it does make the the transaction on the business skills the business profits and savings groups themselves much more effective. I think we've also found that it's a huge springboard to agency because so much of the program is about unlocking the main census of self belief and the capacity to solve their own problems. A lot of that comes from being literate and numerate as well as having access to financial capital and central capital. That's wonderful and you mentioned accountability. I'm curious you know paper bit your seats on challenge and I know that you've adopted. Comcare throughout supporting your program so I'm very interested to hear how is that help support accountability. I think this is a common term we're going to hear a lot more of in you know whatever the future of of for need looks like. So curious to hear how you manage to create that how how it's help support members believe in the model and overall execution in the model. Yeah I really just question I think for us one reason we can update that is accountability but that is not just accountability to our dinners or funders it's also very much accountability to the members themselves it's their money that they're saving it's their program. One of the ethos is behind fire talents is that we should not be there forever we are enablers and on lockers but the savings groups themselves are designed to be self sustaining and to keep going long after the training and support that we provide is ended. And the only way for that to happen is for the groups to be able to operate by themselves which means they do need this level of literacy and numeracy and accountability and to themselves this mutual accountability adds to all the group members and of course the reason the reason that they can have that is if they've got trust in their in data so. The record keeping side of it is one area often one of the hardest parts of saving groups is teaching the record keeping component but then perhaps even more interested in it excited me is some of the impact data that we connect saying one of the really transformational things for us about using con care has been the ability to share the data back with the members and the partners much more quickly and easily so that they can see the impact themselves. Also so that they participate in discussing what's that telling us the senses it's not by talent state it's we are going to use it from raising an accountability this side but actually it's their own data and they learn from it does it resonate with them what do they want to do differently as a result. And even perhaps longer to welcome to this literature in the conversation long ago how could they use it to mobilize funding and resources within their own communities and contacts themselves given the world is perhaps changing in terms of the funding landscape. That's wonderful and you mentioned kind of evolving you know from micro cut it and I think it's on the ball so you know truly integrated data and accountability and feedback to the community how did that happen a lot of organizations struggle and the kind of menees and after thought and and brought into prove to the funder or the donor I'm curious in your case.
how did you success with FUSET and with a long process with the organization was that something that took well to get to? - Yeah, I was a really long process. I let me start off and then hand over to Hannah to fill in the gaps. But I think our, the way we approach while issuing evaluation has changed massively since our early days. I think when we were primarily a credit-led microfinance organization, the data we were interested in was loan repayment rates and very much the quantity of how many members, how many loans, what would the repayment rates? And we found that the staff in the programs, the partner staff in the program were loan officers and maybe debt collectors rather than community development workers, which was not really the space we wanted to be in. And so over time, as we ex-stituted those sorts of programs and we built up the savings that approach, which we found, you're far more sustainable and far more empowering. You can go into the reasons for that more before we get time, but we found at that point as well the data that we wanted to let was changing as well. So yes, we still wanted to know how many members, how much they were saving, how much they were borrowing, all the indicators of whether the groups were healthy, were people attending, were, were loans being repaid. But actually what was really interesting was working with the partners to see, what does poverty look like in this community, what outcomes do you want to see, what are the changes that your cells want to see? And then let's design some indicators around those changes that you want to see because it's not our program, it's not the phytolence program, it's your program, it's your money that you're saving and borrowing. So you define what changes you want to see, and then we can work together on how to measure those changes. So it will look a little bit different in each place where we were, and that's quite interesting from a concave step to the as well, that contextualisation of indicators and what we're trying to measure in each place. But in some places it might be, you know, how many people have health insurance, that might be a change that you will think is really, really important to measure. In other places it might be rates of gender-based violence or they're within a needy ship or girls in school. And so nowadays we will work with our partners and ask them to go through a theory of change process to figure out what is the change we want to see and then we will measure according to that. And the adults is very much, it is their data, it's more on data extended. And again, that's interesting, but we're compared expected because there is some decentralisation that happens and so on. So it's a centralisation that we eat to happen, to present the data to our funders and supporters. But we try and very much to do to that core of it's their data, not ours and it's the change that they want to see that others. It's just going to add to that, I think, our journey as well has been going from kind of using standardized measurements, like Rachel says, to using more program-specific, but also what actually matters to their members and measuring the change that we hope to see happen. And I think, like you said, Jonathan Lecoa, instead of seeing Emily as an add-on at the end, kind of actually it is integral to what we do. And actually also, I think what we've learned is it how we do it affects how participants perceive the programme and its part, they perceive it as part of their interaction with the programme generally. And so it's really important and what you measure is kind of what gets done to some extent. And I think with the standardized poverty measurements, we were using one, which was the theory behind it, was it would give an indication of whether somebody lived above or below particular poverty lines. And so it was 10, quite strange questions often, developed specifically for that country. And one of them, I think, was how many towels do you own in your household? And the challenge with this was like, first of all, it was, I think there was another one about toilets. And so there were often perceived as quite rude and therefore often staff felt they couldn't actually ask them and therefore people often didn't ask them but would go to the house and try to have a little look and make notes. So reduced accuracy or it made people feel like, this is offensive. But the other thing was that people didn't understand why we'd be asking that, what's that got to do with the rest of the programme. And there was one incident where somebody actually thought that to participate in the programme, they had to go and buy a towel. And so that's what happened. And so it's like it actually really, it really muckers to the participants and to their part, you know, how they see the programme. And we want them to learn from the data. So we would now collect the data that, like Rachel says, is based on what we hope of what they've said they hoped to achieve through the programme. But also in terms of how we collect it, we don't very often, very rarely do we collect data from individuals. More often, everything that happens is through the group. So the savings groups are kind of platform for everything. So we would be asking questions to group members as a whole. And then members of the group would respond. So you know, if we were a group, we might be saying, yeah, three of us feel like this, two of us feel like that. That's interesting. And then we would see that data instantly because we'd be raising our hands to different questions or sometimes people we were on the ring. So there's not that need for us then to go away, produce a report and come back and share it because that's happened live there and then. And actually that's useful for the group to say, I thought we were all in the same place with that. But I see that you're not. Or like, hey, when we did that before, do you remember? There's only one of us that said that. And now all of us said it or whatever it might be. So I think that's kind of again, how it's changed. And that's how having metrics relevant to what we hope to see is really useful in terms of the program as well as our learning and fundraising or all of those things that we have to think about as well. That point about how the questions are asked. I think is really relevant as well. I remember when we were first introducing some of these surveys and this concept that you might collect the data using your mobile phone, some of our facilitators, our group trainers felt a little bit concerned about that because they didn't want to be the person with the clipboard or the person with the smartphone because nobody else has a smartphone. They thought that's gonna set me apart and the group won't throw a comfortable with me. But if you are, first of all, asking questions that the group themselves are brought in too 'cause they've helped define what's important and what isn't, but then asking them in this very participatory manner, you get away from that sense of, is the extractive M&E style where someone does come in for that by the clipboard. You get much more this sense of, I should get participatory data and there's a section that we are all learning for a lot once. The fact that it's captured in a smartphone is kind of really neither in or there. It's massively efficient and effective and much easier for all of us. But for the group members themselves, what's important is the fact that they are part of the journey? Yeah, that's wonderful. The question on the streams reminds me of one of our early community health work or programs. It's the first class trend and it just completely destroyed the desire to use the application 'cause it was inappropriate. And then we added that to the M after there was some more core built, it won a lot better. So that way that can matter. I think one of the things that struck me when you were talking, M&E is often about operationally tracking the programmatic intervention once you're already kind of running it. How do you determine which villages to work with in the first place in terms of their interest in the intervention? Whether they're a match, 'cause that can be just as hard as running the program in some ways, is how to figure out where to support real limited resources and it's important to find communities that want the intervention and that it's appropriate for. Yeah, so I guess there's this two elements of that one is that before we start working in New Area, we do do some research to make sure that you know, on 17 other NGOs doing similar projects there or it is as they put us going there in that case. I'd check it to the line with some criteria that we have. So there is some hour-side due diligence and the fetching and research. But very much the strongest driver of where we spot programs is where there is demand. So we will wait to be invited to a new region and then we would want to make sure that the vision that the region themselves has because we're working through the agriculture, we might be invited by a bishop or an optimist bishop and we would want to make sure that their vision for community, social and economic empowerment is something that far talents can deliver. If they want something, if they want microcredit, for example, that's not what we can do anymore so that we will be saying we're probably not the right partner for you. If they are saying they want to work with women because women are typically more excluded, they want to open up groups to people of all rates than non to people from different ethnicities and then they want to use these savings groups as a vehicle for social and economic empowerment for holistically. And then we would continue the conversation and develop a program together and we would also do some community contacts assessments and so on and so on. And that's again, mobile would bring in some of you like concrete to help us collect the data and analyze it more quickly and easily. But a lot of it is around the relationship and the vision alignment that has to happen up front before you start doing any of the, yeah, for hauntings to let you. This is such a cool story like you're really painting a picture of a huge evolution, right? And on a number of levels from starting for the microcredit model moving into the savings model taking more of a standardized, perhaps more extractive M&E approach to now this more participatory M&E approach. And I'm curious we've touched on technology a little bit but I'd love to hear a bit about like how, what has been the role of technology in that evolution and perhaps even sharing like a, paint us a picture of like what does that look like today in practice for a program? - I was just, I think one of the, one of the huge benefits, and I think Jonathan touched on this earlier is around the move from paper based to using technology. And one of the biggest benefits that we've seen is just in terms of how the data is organized allows us to do so much more with the data compared to when it was paper. So we've been keen for out this process not to add more work to what our partners already do but actually to do more with what we have which is kind of like the whole of what five colours is trying to dilute.
So, for example, in Burundi previously, data was collected grouped by groups, so people go to group B, group B, you know, write it all down. And then if they didn't have access to internet in that area, some areas would, some areas, wouldn't those papers might be put on a bus, the bus going to Buchibura when they got to Buchibura, they would be compiled into a report for that quarter for the program. As a whole, perhaps split down by like geographical location, but, you know, broadly. And that's what would be sent to us, and that's the record that would kind of stand over time, and they would still keep the paper. But what would be lost in that is all of that work had gone into collecting group by group data. So much works in a huge time. And yet that details instantly lost when you kind of just aggregate it like that. So one of the huge benefits has been just simply organizing what we were already doing in a different way, and technology being the enabler for that has been not hugely beneficial. So that's been a huge win, I think, for us. I think the other thing is people being able to access the data during their work. So people who are actually collecting the data, being able to see, you know, the status of the group, being able to identify more quickly, groups that might need more attention, whether that's by the conca, or some of the dashboards that we've set up, that kind of the data gets fed into. And our colleagues, Samantha, a little bit, might be able to talk a bit more about that. So these are the kind of the things that have changed in terms of what it practically looks like. But in terms of data collection, what that would look like is we do baseline and end lines. And then also we're using conca to collect what Rachel said earlier, like still we're collecting information around participation, savings and loans, because that's part of the picture as well as the outcome data. So people are using conca, for all of those things, sometimes they're using it, but also tracking the training that is given to different groups, taking progress through modules. But in terms of what it looks like for outcome data, it would look like somebody attending, going through a list of questions, and these questions will all be tied to the theory of change. So measuring what we actually hope to seek change, rather than like standardized metrics. And then depending on the literacy levels of the groups, because as Rachel said, we might be working with people who are low literacy. We might encourage quite a lot of physical participation. So it might be like, okay, if you feel like yes, found over here, if you feel like no. And then that would be noted into conca, as well as then whoever's facilitating that, we would encourage them, at least for some of the questions, to ask more in-depth questions. So like, why you've stood over there? Why is it that you've stood over there and try and encourage particularly people who might not freely speak to ensure that they're speaking and this kind of thing? That's what it would look like in practice. Well, I think it's a really beautiful image that Hannah has shared about the way it used to look. So in the old days, somebody would connect the data and they would put the loves of paint, the bundles of paper on a boss to the capital city. And then the people in the capital city would enter it into netfills, purchase and email it to five talents in the US or the UK. Through every stage of that process, the data, because you further and further away from you and you never look at it again. And there's this real sense that you're not doing it yourself, you're doing it because you have to send it to the capital city by the bus that goes at this time. And then the people of the capital city have to send it on to five talents because that's what the reporting cycle says. And the sense of the loss to their ownership of that data, I think it is really provided. I feel like putting it on a bus really visualizes that. Or now the data is never lost at all because it's on the smart phone in the pocket of the group trainer who lives in the village where the group meets. So the data is always within the hacks, a studio and there's this real sense that they're doing it for themselves, not to put it on that bus and then email it across its continents. I actually just got goosebumps like that that transition is really feels really profound. And it almost just reminds me of if I'm like trying to just check boxes on my list versus like really feeling like this is an important activity that I'm doing for my own benefit. There's a huge difference in that. So I appreciate you illustrating that so vividly. And I want to touch on you've mentioned inherent in this transition shifting from microcredit to a savings model, which I imagine was really hard and complex process. And I'm curious that feels like that's at the heart of this evolution. I'm curious if you would share a little bit more about that transition. Sure. So the origin of five talents was that came out of a conference of I think of bishops in 1998 who said, I'm not writing these words, but they said the churchmen are not often arguing about contentious issues of equal in our priorities, are still hungry. So can you not do something practical about that? Let's start on as to couldn't microfinance agency to deal with some of the grassroots challenges that you see rather than spend all our time on doing about these final issues. So the concept came from this this bishop from Tanzania. A pitellance was founded and office was settled. I mean, money was raised and some programs were started, but really there was not a great sense of what a good one finance program looked like. So we tried a bit of everything in lots of different places. I'm all credit to those who started five tons. They tried a lot of different experiments. They tried to microcredit approaches. They tried some partnership with other organizations and they tried to some savings group approaches. And they found over time they fast forward the clock 10 years on when they've got 10 years of experience, the five at Bylon, they found that in their credit led entities, there were several problems emerging. One was I was saying earlier that the partner staff end up being debt collectors rather than purely to develop workers and their focus is very much on making sure the repayment rates remain high, rather than necessarily making sure that lives are transformed. So there was a sense that by focusing on credit led you are almost drifting away from this wishing to transform life into this is wishing to make sure that your debt repayments stats were good. There was also a sense from the five tenants perspective that it wasn't very sustainable because every time a new member joined a credit led program, five tenants had to find new loan capital. Whereas in the savings that approach every time a new member joins the groups are capitalized. So each member brings their egg to set the date and is actually a much more scalable and will approach to take the savings at approach you don't have to be always hiding new loan capital. Now on paper the theory was that in the credit led institutions, after a certain number of loan cycles, members would want to go and get loans from bigger microfinances to do bulky huge bond banks. But what we found was that nobody wanted to leave because they did value the fact that there was some training given, there was some sense of group fellowship and solidarity, some sense of I belong here that is not scary case this institution. So none of the loan loan credit led institution members actually wanted to leave which meant that members kept on growing. No diva ever graduating. And we had to keep on finding more and more capital than we just keep up with that demand. But then the other point of the most important for this conversation was this sense that we saw in our savings that programs much more sense of ownership of the outcome. So in a credit led program, somebody was they I took a loan from the institution and here's what I did with it were the not savings or program they were setting. As my business I started it with help from my group. It's mine now I'm sharing the profits with my group. I'm reaping the loan. My group members come and help me because they got invested in it as well. And this business is going to be here in the three generations from now my children going to do it to it was a much greater sense that this is our group we've done it ourselves. To that fence of a ownership and power and agency came out much worse from me say I need we just found over time the savings that approach was much more scalable much more sustainable much more recordable. But also much more on it's over years jargon that looks more and higher you say we only the time it's not as easy to send us but over time we exited our credit and programs and only invested in starting savings and programs and with that being this transition more across the big river it was to end in eight so on that to talk to our people. It's beautiful I really appreciate you you sharing that it seems like just a unique approach and a really thoughtful evolution. So thank you for sharing that. So I've I've loved hearing about this evolution in how you've been working and this movement to more participatory savings programs away from this more lone driven model where it's a bit more extractive. So we've heard a bit about five talents journey and evolution. And in this next segment of today's conversation we're going to speak about a specific project that five talents is working on. We are honored to be joined today by Samantha Mouly who is five talents climate literacy manager. Samantha has been designing and running a program for five talents in the Savo Conservation area of Kenya looking at human wildlife conflict and is here to share more on the approach. I will note that this program is a USAID funded program which has been impacted by the stop work order and so we'll also hear from Rachel Lindley on her thoughts on the destruction and evolution of the aid industry overall. Samantha over to you would love to hear hear a bit about the program that you're running. For Savo Conservation area we are working with groups that are within the Savo Conservation area. We are working with groups that are long these conservation areas since we are trained to address human wildlife conflict. In context what our training does we have developed a curriculum and to point out this curriculum we developed together with the communities we had like focus groups that
Kariqina maa hanebana, kariqina maa hanebana, kariqina maa hanebana, kariqina maa hanebana, kariqina maa hanebana,
invited for a conference in Felt d'Africa to show how Teclollo Joe Comquia is able to as in collecting data so it's been a very smooth journey for us. For us as an organisation getting that feedback from somebody like usrd is really useful and encouraging and we're quite a small organisation really relatively this was our first usrd grant and so I feel like Comquia has enabled us to do what we were already doing in many ways on paper and just like take it up a level and like I said before be able to get so much more from what we were already doing so it was really encouraging for us to have that that positive feedback from them as well. Yeah I appreciate that that framing of like just be able to get more from the work you're already doing. That's actually probably a great segue into talking a bit about USAID we're recording this conversation late February 2025 there's been a lot of changes happening with USAID and I know Rachel you you've got some some thoughts on changes and evolutions and future of aid and I'd love to hand it to you to share a bit about how you're seeing things. Thank you so five talents we have one grant from USAID and that is from the Wuervkin survey that Samantha's been talking about so like many other organisations we have received the stop work order for that project I guess it's better to say that right now the situation still feels very fluid and dynamic it's not quite clear where it's all going to land. Be feel I guess grateful at five talents that our exposure is is relatively limited it is just this one project and we really feel for many NGOs who are much more exposed and therefore are losing true offending and particularly of course for the community members you are moving from the seating vital services so we feel a lot of I guess thorough and sadness at the situation. I'd come in at it from the point of an NGO that supports savings groups when I look at a savings group I see a group of people coming together to pull their resources to address common challenges and I can't help taking that up scale to think about international development in the same lens I think there are so many challenges that the world faces that are global common challenges whether that's climate change or migration of people or and food security and supply chains these are all great well issues and so I can't help feeling that an isolationist perspective perhaps is not the risk to help for record what we see from Rukin at savings groups is that when people do come together or pull their resources and bring the power of what they each have they can solve problems together but people can't do that on their own so I guess let's make a say that because I work for a savings group charity and I'm passionate about international development but I do think there's a little bit of a lesson we can take while in the way that groups are 20 within in remote parts of Sarva or DR Congo or Brune Diel, Sarcidand can come together and make a difference but only by coming together and so I do feel that it perhaps working together in partnership it is one of the the lessons we can take and that said I do recognise there are a lot of people who do feel frustrated with the international development and aid systems that there has been perhaps a lack of or loss of trust in the aid projects the aid industry it has in places the common industry or rather the thinking that is led and owned by communities and grassroots themselves so I spent there is a lot of learning for all of us to take on from some of these development about how we lead to present what we do but to and how we need to re-broost our I hope for five tellers of the relatively small organisation is probably easier for us you know we don't have many layers of bureaucracy and management we do have lots of local partners our work is all led by by partners from the communities themselves so we don't have many many cases bureaucracy and so on so perhaps for us again it's a little bit easier to to feel intimidated from trying to promote the challenges but that said I hope the whole aid sector does need to look at re-brooding trust on when showing how aid money is spent effectively I want other ways to do that of course is by having good data that shows the impact so it brings us right back to it to what we started gathering impact data to show the impact of the money that is the expense it really really important but so too is making sure the money is being spent effectively on programs that due to the very real change for the communities themselves and if only those communities would say that so again bringing communities into the process so that they own the change that they want to see they're the ones who talk about how we'll want to measure it and and show the results and that are being achieved are which is principle each of the power and the importance of something like compare to rebuild the trust to show the transparency and the effectiveness but to make sure that's rooted in in the ownership of the communities themselves I'm curious like if you could paint a picture of what this aid industry looks like five years from now where we've kind of learned some of these lessons like what does that look like? I think the future has to note like more control being in the hands of the communities themselves right from the program design phase through to the impact measurement phase I think perhaps one of the challenges has been that there is still a lot on top down delivery top down ideas the money is raised in one place it's sent to another place with a contract of what has to be delivered when and that's not a very empowering approach and there's no necessary guarantee that the money that is sent and the project that is delivered is actually what is one to the rooted higher the communities themselves so for me I think the future would look like having a system which starts with the communities themselves with the communities and openly led organizations develop projects that they know need local needs and then the funding is cured for that and delivered to deliver those those ends I'm bought the sort of the whole the person in the driving seat is the community themselves one of our one of our Hymning members from Kenya has this wonderful phrase that in development the communities at the centre and with the periphery and I think perhaps the aid industry had built up itself to be at the centre and the community to speak at the periphery so we need to fit that on it which and how the communities themselves at this mental where they should be our role on the fishery is to provide funding and technical support to enable and unlock all those impacts but it's the communities themselves you have to be in the driving seat to the development change and determining what it should be lacking how it should be delivered and actually I think sorry to come back again to it to come here I think the role of com carry in and aiming what does in communities to showcase that home impacts is going to become increasingly important as well because if we imagine that there is going to be less funding flowing from so that's called the global north and more funding having to be raised in the countries where we work communities themselves partners themselves lucky lucky led delivery organizations themselves have a to need to have access to that impact and to showcase their own impacts and raise their money and that's actually an exciting vision of the future for me I think at Fatsha then we've often said we should not be here forever we should not be here forever but the way to put ourselves out of business is to make sure that what is themselves have access to the data and the resources that they need to do the burden cells that's really really beautifully put Rachel yeah there's so many so many layers to that and I think you're your vision of development being a lot more locally led right a lot less top-down and sort of fueled by high quality data that's owned by the programs that whose data it is that really resonates for me yeah and it's going to be interesting to see how how it all unfolds yeah I've ended the real pain I think we feel is for he was turning up at health genetics tomorrow and there's nobody there to the vantidrups that they need you so even if there's an announcement there's going to be exciting to me out on what of this I think the short term pay me if we're watching that and absolutely yeah the short term pain is hard to ignore and we shouldn't ignore it all right well I think we can wrap there well thank you so much to each of you for joining today to Rachel to Hannah to Samantha this has been just a really insightful conversation and I'm just I'm so impressed with what five talents is able to do and inspired by the small but mighty role that come care plays in all of it so I really appreciate you sharing that with our audience thanks so much for the opportunity to chat today and thanks again for all your work do it can compare it as we share it has enabled us to do more and to do better so really grateful so thank you to Rachel Hannah and Samantha from Five Talents what an inspiring conversation here a few key things I'm taking from today's discussion savings groups over microcredit five talents intentionally shifted from microcredit to a community savings group model finding it more empowering sustainable and scalable but the approach puts the members own capital and agency at the center participatory data is power their eminny evolved from potentially extractive standardized metrics to a participatory process where communities help define success and own their data using tools like comcare has enabled real-time learning and accountability not just reporting up to donors locally led is the future true impact comes when communities are in the driving seat identifying need designing solutions and owning the outcomes and lastly technology adds value at every layer Digital tools like
that ComCare proved essential, adding value far beyond initial expectations. For community members, it enhances data ownership and fosters a sense of belonging to a larger effort. For program managers like Samantha, it enables easier progress tracking, coordination across dispersed teams, and operational visibility, even when travel is impossible. And for the organization and donors, it ensures higher quality data, streamlines reporting, and allows for compelling visual storytelling of impact. That's our show. Please like, rate, review, subscribe, and share this episode if you found it useful. It really truly helps us grow our impact, and write to us at
[email protected] with any ideas, comments, or feedback. This show is executive produced by myself. Brethana Balachandar and Michael Kelliger are our producers, and cover our is by Ceyna Chukon.
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